This third volume in the series about Max, a transgender boy, focuses on Max and his friend Teresa as they visit a farm and get into (minor) mischief, showing it’s possible to create picture books about LGBTQ characters that neither dwell on nor ignore their LGBTQ identities.
Max, a White transgender boy, is going on an overnight trip to a farm with his class, including his friend Teresa, a darker-skinned girl. Max likes playing with Teresa, even though she’s willing to flout rules to find adventure and doesn’t mind getting into (mild) trouble as a consequence. She also bends gender norms—she likes to get “really dirty” while playing outdoors and tends to be the leader in their adventures. Max is more hesitant, but ultimately has fun during their gentle mischief.
The first-person narrative captures Max’s sense of excitement and wonder about exploring the farm and interacting with the animals. “We learn how much poop cows make in a day. (A lot!)” he tells us at one point. Max, Teresa, and Steven (a Black boy who wore a dress in Book Two and here wears a sparkling unicorn shirt) ride horses, play with baby chicks, and have a farm-cooked meal. Max and Teresa then go off on a forbidden midnight escapade to visit the piglets. Max is curious and observant; his personality and voice shine throughout. Lozano’s big-headed depictions of the characters force us to engage first and foremost with their emotive faces.
Lukoff, who also won a well-deserved Stonewall Book Award in January for When Aidan Became A Brother, once again shows his skill with narrative and characterization. When Teresa comes up to Max in the middle of the night to lead him on an adventure, for example, Max comments, “I can smell cookies on her breath.” There’s a whole separate adventure and a whole lot about Teresa’s personality in that one sentence.
Max’s transgender identity isn’t a focus, but nor is it ignored completely. When the boys and girls are sent to sleep on opposite sides of the hayloft, the farmer points Max to the girls’ side, but “The teacher pulls him aside to explain.” We’re not given the explanation; Lukoff assumes (not unreasonably) that readers are familiar with Max’s gender identity from the first book. We just see Max put his sleeping bag next to his friend Steven’s and all is well. Later, when the square dance teacher thinks Max belongs with the girls, Max instead goes over to the boys’ side. “All the kids in my class know I belong there,” he says. No teacher interference is necessary this time; Max has found confidence in himself and knows his friends have his back.
To dwell on those moments (as affirming as they are) is to skew the story, however. It isn’t “about” Max being transgender—it’s about a boy and his friends on a farm. The boy just happens to be transgender. The first book of the series, Call Me Max, focused more on Max’s gender identity, and the second, Max and the Talent Show, explored gender through the lens of his friend Steven, who likes to wear dresses. Those are both important topics, and Lukoff handles them with consummate skill, but the beauty of a series is that we have more time to see Max and his friends in the fullness of their lives, not simply defined by their gender identities. (This is possible in single books, too, but a series provides even more space for doing so.)
It’s also hugely refreshing to see books about LGBTQ children that focus on their positive friendships with other children rather than the misunderstandings and even harassment that other children may exhibit towards them. (Those “problem” stories may have a place, but there are already a lot of them, and there’s more to LGBTQ lives than problems.) We need more books like Max on the Farm, both about transgender boys and about characters of other LGBTQ identities and their children.
As with the first two books, this one is produced in a picture book format with full-page illustrations, but broken into short chapters, so it slides somewhat into early reader territory.
I absolutely love this book and its predecessors. The Max and Friends series should be on every elementary school and children’s library bookshelf as well as in home libraries—and with more and more television networks offering LGBTQ-inclusive children’s shows, is it too much to hope that we’ll see Max, Teresa, and Steven on our screens someday?
(Smart shopper note: There’s another picture book titled Max on the Farm that’s a spinoff from The Secret Life of Pets movie. This is not that book and has nothing to do with the movie; they just share a title.)
