One of the most frequent questions I get from readers is “Do you know of any children’s books about reproduction that work for my family?” Now, no matter how you created your family, and no matter what your gender identity, I’m happy to say the answer is “Yes.” And I’m giving away signed copies.
What Makes a Baby
The book began as a Kickstarter project, which I mentioned about a year ago; it’s now been picked up by Seven Stories Press and will be published by them starting May 21 (though you can pre-order now). At the bottom of this post is the video Silverberg created for Kickstarter, which explains more about the book and his approach!
A Kids’ Book on Baby Making for All—Yes, All—Families
LGBT parents—and any others who have ever struggled to explain reproduction to their young children in a way relevant to their families—will rejoice at the new picture book What Makes a Baby
Silverberg, who self-identifies as queer and has worked as a certified sexuality educator for 20 years, explained in an interview, “When you focus on a particular representation, you’re always leaving people out. . . . Parents should be able to tell their kids stories in a way that centers their child’s experience.”
The book, aimed at children from four to seven years old, simply explains that some bodies have sperm, some have eggs, and that to make a baby, you need an egg, a sperm, and a place for the baby to grow—a uterus, which some bodies have and some don’t. It never refers to gender or any particular way of bringing sperm and egg together.
Because the book paints a broad picture, however, it “really needs the parent to fill in the blanks,” Silverberg said. “The process is not just buying the book or reading the book,” he explained, but also “putting our own families in there.”
To assist parents in doing that, he has also created a 60-page readers’s guide, available for free download at what-makes-a-baby.com. It offers detailed suggestions for how to use the book as a starting point for speaking with children and answering their questions about reproduction, difference, gender, race, bodies, and more.
Award-winning Toronto artist Fiona Smyth’s illustrations, in bold, solid colors, call to mind the vivid images of the well-known (and also gay) children’s illustrator Todd Parr, but have a whimsy and dynamism all their own. Many of the characters are gender-ambiguous. The bright purple, green, blue, yellow, and pink colors, even for skin tones, means the book works for all races and ethnicities, too.
Silverberg and Smyth tried to make the illustrations biologically accurate when needed (like the close-up uterus diagram)—but Silverberg wasn’t trying to write a science text. “It’s a kids’ book and it can be fantastical,” he said. “There are times to be concrete and times to be fun and silly.” The sperm and egg have smiling faces, for example. In another picture, we see images of the many “stories” they carry inside them about the bodies they are from. When the egg and sperm meet, they “swirl together in a special kind of dance” and share those stories.
Silverberg explained that he wrote that rather metaphorical passage, surprisingly, to correct a common scientific inaccuracy: that active sperm march towards a passive egg. “The egg actually emits chemicals that draw sperm to it,” he said—and he wanted to convey this more egalitarian method.
At the other end of the process, the book shows both a vaginal birth and a C-section, but does not assume that the person birthing the child will raise him or her. It speaks instead of the people anticipating the baby’s birth, and ends with the question, ”Who was waiting for you to be born?” Adoptive families will appreciate the space this leaves for them.
Silverberg initially wrote the book at the request of a transgender friend, who was expecting a second child with his female partner and whose four-year-old was starting to ask questions about baby making. His friend observed that existing children’s books on the subject all assumed parents were biologically related to their kids, which was not his situation. Silverberg took up the challenge. He had never written a book for children (his professional work is with adults), but as the son of a sex therapist and a children’s librarian, he brought a certain amount of ingrained knowledge to the table, along with experience in media production and marketing.
He field tested the book with “everyone who would let me,” he said, including families in his Toronto LGBTQ community, straight relatives, and particular types of families he sought out to make sure the book worked for them.
Silverberg had, however, seen far too many self-published books that were well-intentioned but of poor quality. He wanted a book that “looks as nice as a Maurice Sendak or Dr. Seuss.” A quality book tells the reader, “your experience is just as important as anyone else’s,” he said.
He therefore launched a campaign on Kickstarter, the Web-based system for funding creative projects, hoping to raise $9500 within the system’s 30-day timeframe. He raised it all the first day, and ended with over $65,000 pledged, making his the most-funded picture book on Kickstarter to date, he said. Why such success? “The real answer is parents,” he said. Word spread as they jumped in to support a book that filled a need.
Five publishers then approached him, and he chose Seven Stories Press in New York City. He was committed to releasing 1000 copies through Kickstarter first, but will be releasing an identical book through Seven Stories starting May 21 (with preorders available now through online booksellers). Silverberg plans What Makes a Baby to be the first of a series, with the next for children ages seven to ten, and the third for ten through puberty.
Together, What Makes a Baby and its thoughtful reader’s guide are a phenomenal and much- needed resource for all families today.
[Updated: The giveaway below has ended.]
The Prize
A copy of What Makes a Baby, signed by Cory Silverberg. I’ll give away another later in the week, too, so stay tuned!
The Giveaway
Leave a comment below about either a) how you (or your parents) created your family; b) how you explained it or hope to explain it to your kid(s); or c) how your parent(s) or others explained your family creation to you. It doesn’t have to be long or detailed; the winner will be drawn randomly, not judged.
I will randomly select the winner from all comments received before 8:00 a.m. ET, May 14, 2013.
Additional Rules and Restrictions
U.S. residents only, please. One entry per person. Don’t worry if your comment is moderated; once I approve it, it will appear based on the time you submitted it. Spam comments, including off-topic or commercial comments, will not count. If you win any one of the drawings for this book, you cannot play again for this book. (You can leave a comment to participate in the discussion, but I won’t enter you in the drawing.) If you are or have been a paying advertiser (or an employee of a paying advertiser) on Mombian, you can’t play.
You must also leave a valid e-mail address with your comment. Don’t leave a postal address, though. If you win, I’ll contact you by e-mail about shipping. I will then share the winner’s name and postal address with the author, for the sole purpose of allowing him to mail you your prize directly.
We plan on telling our daughter that we could not have a baby all by ourselves, so her uncle helped us (he is the sperm donor).
We used ART with a sperm donor- and kept the vials. She is only 2 but has already met one of her “halfsies” (half sibling from the same donor). Some day I will show her the vials and explain about how she, and her halfsies, were born.
We adopted our son at birth, and he is 18 months old now. He will always know about his adoption, and that his birthmother is my wife’s niece.
Our family is a very blended family. I have 3 children from a previous heterosexual marriage. Then I met an fell in love with my partner. She has been an incredible stepmother to them and treat them as her own. We have taught them that you make a family in your heart. In the spirit of this, we have unofficially “adopted” a transgendered youth and intend to officially adopt another child soon. The children are very open to all types of families and individuals.
Like Karen, we’ll say that we wanted to have a baby together but needed help. Some men and women want to help other people have babies — one of these men, and some doctors, donated sperm cells to help Mummy get pregnant.
I was single and decided that I was not going to wait any longer for a partner to create a family. So at 39 years of age, I went ahead and used an anonymous donor. As far as I knew, I did not have a fertility issue, just a sperm access issue. I got pregnant fairly quickly, had an uneventful pregnancy and my darling daughter is now 7 years old and thriving. I have never hidden anything about her creation. She knows she has a father somehwere, but she does not have a Daddy. I told her that I really wanted to have a baby, but needed something from a man to create one (she calls it “a sparkle” but I have no idea where she got that from!!), so a doctor helped me with that part. She has a half brother that she has meet several times and she knows he has the same father. She is unconcerned about the absence of a father in her life as she has her grandfather. All is well and we are a happy and healthy mother daughter team.
Our daughter has never asked about HERSELF but she often asks how people get pregnant. We talk about a seed called sperm and another seed called egg and that together they can start a baby. Once she asked me if her donor gave me a special cookie to eat that started my belly making her!
My wife and I chose an ID release but otherwise anonymous donor when we conceived our daughter. We liked the idea that our child would have the option of contacting her donor as an adult if she wants.
We are a two-mom family- and we created our family with the help of a sperm donor. Same donor for all three kids – although both my partner and I carried. We have told our kids you need boy parts and girl parts to make a baby- and since we are two women, a kind mind donated the boy parts to so we could have them. We use this as an example of service, and once a year go out and give ‘service’ to our community by volunteering.
We’ve just started talking with our two year old about the “helpful man” (our identity release donor) who gave Mama the sperm so that we could grow the baby in her belly. I can’t wait to see this book!
My partner and I tried IUI three times and finally went the Foster/Adoption route. We have two amazing kids we got when they were two days old whom we have adopted. We would love this book.
The old-fashioned way — that is, “unplanned.”
My wife gave birth to our daughter with help from a known donor, and we’re planning one or more future pregnancies with the same donor. Our daughter knows he’s her “donor,” and we call him Uncle to emphasize that he’s part of our family, too.
Dana, question for you: do you think this book would be appropriate for a family who did foster-to-adopt with toddlers? (I’m thinking of a friend’s family here, whose kids would be the perfect age for this book.) I peeked at your review on Bay Windows, and questions like “Who was waiting for you to be born” seem like they would be a little awkward for my friend’s family to answer. Are there accompanying pictures showing someone eagerly awaiting a new baby, or is it more neutral than that?
I had my son using an anonymous donor — very easy to explain, by comparison…
Hi S.,
Dana pointed me to your question and asked if I would chime in. My short answer is that it could work for the family you’re describing, although since everyone is different it’s hard to know for sure if it will fit for them. I’ll share a bit about that last question which you were wondering about.
That last question “who was waiting for you to be born?” was added in large part with adopted parents in mind.
The truth is that for parents who foster and parents who adopt, they often go through a long process of deciding if it’s right for them, imagining what their lives will be like, and then navigating often unkind systems (particularly for LGBTQ folks, who in many states are not allowed to foster or adopt, and in others have to deal with homophobia and transphobia while trying to make a family).
I wanted to create a space where that kind of waiting and that kind of labor would be as acknowledged and valued as the labor that someone who is carrying a child and giving birth goes through.
The question let’s any parent say “I was waiting for you. I was waiting for you before I even knew you.”
You might want to take a look at the Reader’s Guide that I wrote to accompany the book. It’s free, and you can download it from my website (http://www.what-makes-a-baby.com/, then click on “Reader’s Guide”). It shares more about how the book is written and how parents can use it. I think that foster parents were not very well represented in the families that test read the book, and that’s something I’m going to watch with my next two books, but I do think the book could work for them. Although the book won’t feel right for everyone. Once it’s available it should make its way to public libraries, so another option is to ask at your local library and see if they can get it, and then you can see it too. And if you have any other questions, feel free to email me directly at cory@corysilverberg.com. Thanks for asking about this and for thinking of your friends! Cory
Thanks Cory for your response (and thanks Dana for pointing Cory to the question.) The reader’s guide is fabulous, and actually did make it much clearer to see both pros and cons of how well it might fit my friends’ family. Their adopted son was born while they were still fostering and trying to adopt a completely different child, which makes the “waiting for you” bit rather sticky. (They were very fortunate that being a gay couple was not actually much of a stumbling block to either process. I totally see how this would be very different for other families.) On the other hand, the bit about the baby’s growth depending partly on the uterus it grows in might be a really good way for my friends to discuss the reason for some of the challenges their kids face. I’ll point my friends to the reader’s guide, and they can decide from there.
Thank you!
My wife and I are expecting our first child in December. (IVF). Telling them how they were created is a huge deal and of course like many we will be honest with the process of our journey.