“Lesbian, trans, bisexual, queer, gay. Celebrate this great community today!” begins this cheery board book, part of the publisher’s “This Little” series, that profiles 11 famous LGBTQ people: Leonardo da Vinci, Josephine Baker, Alan Turing, Harvey Milk, Marsha P. Johnson, Freddie Mercury, Sally Ride, Gilbert Baker, Daniel Quasar, Martina Navratilova, and Shane Ortega. The left-hand page of each spread offers a short rhyming couplet about each person while the right gives a few more details in prose. A final spread shows images and single sentences about 15 additional people, along with a short glossary of terms.
The information on each person is necessarily short, but seems fitting for the target age group. Even so, some of the information (particularly on the right-hand pages) may go over the heads of toddlers, but they should enjoy the rhymes—and can take in further information as they grow.
I have just a few quibbles: First, while most of the rhymes speak about actions the person took or accomplishments they had, about Marsha P. Johnson we read, “This Little Rainbow was at Stonewall Inn/when trouble came for her and her friends.” The couplet makes her seem entirely passive; we get no further details about what she actually did. Better, perhaps, might have been, “This Little Rainbow was at Stonewall Inn/when she stood up for herself and her friends.” The facing page does explain that she and Sylvia Rivera “organized gay rights protests and created a group called STAR to help homeless trans people,” which is fine, but doesn’t shed any light on her importance at Stonewall.
Some people might also object to the inclusion of Martina Navratilova, who, despite her many accomplishments in tennis and for the LGB community, has hedged when it comes to the full participation of trans women and girls in women’s and girls’ sports. (See both Dawn Ennis’ piece at Forbes and Cyd Zeigler’s piece at OutSports.) Her position seems to have shifted a bit over time, and perhaps she will someday come to support full inclusion, but for the moment, a different person might have been a better choice.
Finally, the glossary uses the term “intersexed,” which should be simply “intersex” (though it rightly says “transgender” and not “transgendered”).
Overall, though, this is a fairly successful attempt to provide a first look at famous LGBTQ people and a stepping stone to picture book biographies and more detailed compilations for older kids.
