Harvey Milk (People of Pride)

In this simple board book, we learn about Harvey Milk’s life from his days in the Navy to his time running a camera shop in San Francisco and deciding to run for political office. We see how his campaigns inspired others to come out. Once elected, we read, he worked on a law to stop gay people being fired from their jobs, fought other injustices, and was among those who asked Gilbert Baker to design a symbol for the LGBTQ rights movement—the rainbow flag. The book does not mention his assassination, which feels appropriate for the intended age range of 2- to 5-year-olds. (Other biographies for slightly older children, Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag, by Rob Sanders, and The Harvey Milk Story, by Kari Krakow, do mention his death.)

Yet that target age range from Little Bee seems miscalibrated to the level of language used here, which feels better suited to 5- to 7-year-olds. That’s not because the queer content in the books is inappropriate for the very youngest children; but words like “degenerate,” “spectacular,” and “antiwar,”  as well as more complex sentences and concepts (like “civil rights,” “public service,” and “political office”) may mean younger children simply won’t understand it yet.

This approach seems to be part of a trend, noted by Elizabeth Bluemle in Publishers Weekly last year, “where books meant for ages 4-7 are suddenly in toddler format,” even though “the stories just don’t connect with the children whom board books aim to serve.” She observes about several other (non-LGBTQ) board-book biographies, “While children should be introduced to real role models as early and often as possible, often the stories we share mean zippity-doo-dah to a two-year-old…. Wouldn’t it be better to wait just a few years until young children can truly appreciate these admirable heroes? Or work a little harder to marry the delivery of the information to the age of the listener?”

Exactly. And there are plenty of ways to create LGBTQ-inclusive board books that are geared linguistically to the very youngest children—such as these, which focus on themes of family, ABCs, and rainbow colors. (Little Bee’s own Our Rainbow is among them.) Alternatively, board books about Milk that focused on narrower aspects of his life (even lightly fictionalized stories, say, about him looking for his megaphone so he could speak with a loud voice) might have been a better way to introduce them to toddlers and preschoolers, rather than presenting a fuller, but more complex, biography. (Sarah Prager shows the narrower approach beautifully in her Kind Like Marsha.)

Yes, you could simply use this biography with slightly older children, for whom it would be terrific—but even five-year-olds, at the upper end of Little Bee’s target range, may not want to read books whose board-book format marks them as “baby” books. Still, this is not a bad story by any means. I just hope that children who are old enough to understand its language aren’t turned off by the format. And introducing children of all ages to LGBTQ heroes is a fine goal—GLAAD and Little Bee are to be commended for reminding us of this ongoing need.