A new animated video series offers stories for and about kids who were conceived via various forms of donor conception, in a variety of family types! They cover topics like what donor conception is, what a donor sibling is, and how donor-conceived kids can respond to questions about their families. Watch the first episode here!
The “My Donor Story” video series is based on the series of more than 30 picture books by Sharon Leya. The 30 books cover many permutations of donor conception type (sperm, egg, sperm and egg, and embryo donation, plus surrogacy) and family type (two moms, two dads, a mom and a dad, a single mom, and single dad). They’re all told from the perspective of a donor-conceived child learning about their creation.
The videos build on the books, offering short vignettes that, as Leya wrote on Instagram, “[give] donor-conceived kids the opportunity to see themselves reflected in a more realistic way and help guide them in ways to understand and explain what it means to be donor-conceived.”
In this first episode, the kids in Maisie’s class are sharing interesting facts about their family trees. Maisie’s fact is that she has a new donor sibling named Ava. The teacher asks her to explain to the class what a donor sibling is, and she does, prompting a classmate to ask, “What’s a donor?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Maisie responds, and explains that, too. She’s clearly been taught by her parents about her creation, and is confident and proud to share her knowledge with others. (Readers of the books will know that Maisie has two moms
I love the idea of these videos. I’ve been fond of the books for the simple ways they explain the basics of donor conception, but the videos will model an even wider variety of circumstances and situations. And kids who enjoyed the books will likely enjoy seeing the characters from them animated on their screens.
Leya told me in an e-mail, too, that she’s working on allowing people to customize the books with their own names, pronouns, and likenesses, and is hoping to incorporate characters with trans and nonbinary identities into some of the videos.
Here’s the first video in the series; subscribe to the My Donor Story YouTube channel so you know when new ones drop!
For more picture books on the topic, see my Database of LGBTQ Family Books, filtered by the “Assisted Reproduction” tag.
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