A new picture book celebrates the many different types of human bodies, of various shades, sizes, shapes, ages, genders, and abilities. Queer couples, transgender people, nonbinary people, and other LGBTQ folks are plentiful.
Bodies Are Cool, by Tyler Feder (Dial Books) is a joyous exploration of human variety. Each page explores a different aspect of human bodies, such as size, shape, skin color, hair, eyes, faces, skin markings, fingers, tummies, legs, and scars—but each page shows an intersectional diversity of bodies as it depicts the main theme. Feder offers a rhythmic sentence about each aspect followed by the assertion “Bodies are cool!”
We see bodies that are heavy, thin, and in-between; ones with stretch marks, moles, scars (including trans men with top surgery scars), tattoos, vitiligo (loss of skin pigment), alopecia, and different numbers of digits; with characters having prosthetics, eye patches, ostomy pouches, other surgical monitoring devices, oxygen machines, hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, and more. There seem to be at least two people for most identities or abilities.
One particularly striking two-page spread near the end shows the same characters on each page, several years apart. We see signs of aging (kids growing taller; some grown-ups getting gray hair), but we also see other signs of change: one character is now pregnant; one who was pregnant now has a child; another who read as female and was wearing a dress now reads as male, with shorter hair, a button-down shirt, and bow tie. Clever use of color and positioning tells readers they are the same characters.
The book is very similar in concept to the newly revised The Bare Naked Book. (My review here.) I like them both and wouldn’t necessarily recommend one over the other. The Bare Naked Book includes a page on genitals (nongendered) and on the inside of the body; Bodies Are Cool doesn’t. Bodies Are Cool shows a slightly larger range of different abilities and a few more obviously queer folks, but The Bare Naked Book isn’t bad in these regards. Each page of Bodies Are Cool feels a little busier; ones in The Bare Naked Book are a little simpler, while still packed with diversity. Those aren’t judgments; each book may appeal to readers seeking different things. I’d encourage families and libraries to stock both, since body positivity and understanding and accepting the range of human bodies are so important. We should be grateful to have such a variety of books about human variety.
