It’s a very good day that sees new picture books by the multi-award-winning Kyle Lukoff and by Lindz Amer, creator of the award-winning Queer Kid Stuff edutainment video series. Each book may make you think more deeply about gender—but in very different ways.
In the absolutely delightful and highly recommended There’s No Such Thing as Vegetables, (Henry Holt), National Book Award Finalist, Newbery Honoree, and two-time Stonewall Award winner Kyle Lukoff uses his long-standing interest in the (non-)category of vegetables to encourage critical thinking about social constructs.
When a child named Chester goes to the community garden to get some vegetables for a salad, the anthropomorphic plants in the garden—cauliflower, carrots, brussels sprouts, and more—soon inform him that there are no vegetables there. In fact, a kale plant explains, “There’s no such thing as vegetables.” Broccoli is a flower, potato is a root, and eggplants and peppers are fruits, the other plants tell him.
Chester tries to define a vegetable, only to be foiled by exceptions pointed out by the clever plants. Exasperated, he asks why people call them vegetables, to which they respond by noting other concepts that humans have made up, including money, countries and states, and even words.
No, there’s no obvious queer inclusion here, and the book never mentions gender, but the story’s questioning of categories can clearly be applied to the concept of gender, among many other things. Indeed, in Lukoff’s middle grade novel Different Kinds of Fruit, nonbinary character Bailey brings up the idea that “there’s no such thing as vegetables” and says that human-created categories “don’t always do a good job of explaining the world.” People might look at Bailey, they continue, and decide they’re a boy because of certain characteristics, or a girl because of others, “but ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ aren’t even important categories.” (Lukoff also had the trans protagonist of his Newbery Honor-winning middle-grade novel Too Bright to See note that vegetables don’t exist.)
In the one-page afterward to There’s No Such Thing as Vegetables, Lukoff explains further, “One kind of category is called a social construct,” which are “ideas that groups of people invent together.” He asks readers to think about other social constructs they may know of, to question why people are split into groups, and to figure out which social constructs are helpful and which harmful, as a prelude to making change.
Readers at the younger end of the stated 4- to 8-year-old age range for the book may view it simply as a lively story of chatty produce trying to avoid ending up in a lunch bowl, and enjoy the fun details in illustrator Andrea Tsurumi’s whimsical illustrations. (I was particularly struck by the adorable little kohlrabi.) Slightly older readers, however (and their grown-ups), should enjoy not only the entertaining story, but also the challenge that Lukoff presents.
Lukoff’s dry sense of humor is also in full bloom here—and while we’ve seen this in many of his books, the tone mostly reminds me of his hugely amusing but lesser-known earlier titles, A Storytelling of Ravens and Explosion at the Poem Factory. I am all in for this. Anyone who thinks that teaching about LGBTQ or other social justice topics requires a serious approach could learn a lot from this book. Lukoff isn’t hitting readers over the head with an explicit connection to gender or race or any social concept, but he is helping them to think critically about the world around them, sowing seeds for future harvests. It’s an approach that should lead to strong roots.
He notes in the afterward that he first learned that tomatoes were a fruit, not a vegetable, when he was seven, and he’s been interested in categories ever since. It feels like Lukoff is finally fully a-dressing a concept that he has tossed around for a while; we should be grapeful that he hasn’t been able to leaf it alone. Salad days indeed.
Amer’s Hooray for She, He, Ze, and They! What Are Your Pronouns Today? illustrated by Kip Alizadeh (Simon & Schuster) takes a more direct approach to gender in an affirming and exuberant picture book celebrating pronouns and the joy of finding the right one.
In their trademark conversational style, narrator Lindz introduces themselves and their pronouns (they/them), and asks readers about theirs. They then explain that pronouns are what we use to tell people about our gender, “that tingly feeling inside that tells you who you are and how you want to express yourself to the world.”
Lindz shares some possible pronouns, including he, she, they, ze, and more. They remind readers that they can choose the pronouns that feel right to them, because the right ones “feel super-cool-totally-awesome-amazingly-wonderful, just like YOU!” Using the right pronouns is as comforting as a favorite sweater or a warm hug, or like any of several other delightful analogies shown across subsequent pages. It’s also okay, they say reassuringly, if none of the pronouns in the book are the right ones, or if you don’t know your pronouns yet.
In Queer Kid Stuff and their other work, Amer has always blended pedagogy with a sense of joy, and that skill is on full display here as they both explain pronouns in a kid-friendly way and show rather than tell us what gender euphoria can be. The book also supports a suggestion in Amer’s Rainbow Parenting, where they advise adults to check in with young people about their pronouns, allowing room for change or fluctuation. “All you have to do is ask: ‘What are your pronouns today?'” Amer wrote in that book; here, they give parents and other grown-ups an aid to doing so.
Kip Alizadeh’s bright watercolor and pencil illustrations reflect and enhance the lively text, showing children with a variety of clothing, skin tones, and hairstyles as swirls of color weave around them, outward expressions of their inner joy. Narrator Lindz is drawn on the first and last pages, and one spread shows both Lindz and Alizadeh high-fiving over their own gender euphoria, perhaps reminding young readers that there are adults who have been through gender journeys and are happy as a result.
Backmatter includes a short “Dear Grown-ups” note from Amer about their own gender journey, and a note from Alizadeh about the artistic inspirations for the book.
A highly recommended addition to the growing number of children’s books about pronouns.
A final note: I probably don’t need to remind readers here of the vital and literally lifesaving importance of supporting and protecting children of all genders. The recent death of Oklahoma nonbinary student Nex Benedict is a tragic example of what can happen when we as a society fail in that. But even as we speak and act in outrage over what happened to Nex, we need to remember also to celebrate and model queer joy and to question the assumptions and beliefs that can lead to misunderstanding, bias, and hate, both personal and societal. These books alone won’t make a difference. But they can be part of a greater solution.