With the simplicity and clarity of the other “First Conversation” titles, authors Megan Madison and Jessica Ralli here explore the many meanings of love, including love of self, love of family, friends, and pets, and romantic love. As with the other books in the series, each spread offers information about one aspect of the topic, then asks readers questions, like “Who loves you? Who do you love?” encouraging them to think about the content in the context of their own lives. It’s an approach I like a lot. The book is also inclusive of non-heterosexual relationships and a variety of gender expressions, though one key LGBQ term is unfortunately omitted.
Love can be a feeling or an action, the authors explain. We can love things or people. And a “special kind of love you might feel when you get bigger” is “romantic love.” Grown-ups might show this love by “going on a date or kissing on the lips.” The images on this page (by the always delightful Anne/Andy Passchier) show a two-woman couple and a couple who read as a nonbinary person in a suit and tie and a bearded person in a wedding dress. Another image shows a person with a mustache wearing a tiara and a mermaid costume, holding hands with a child.
Furthermore, “Anybody can love anybody,” and there are different words to talk about this. On this spread, we see the image of a man who tells us, “I’m a man who loves other men—I’m gay,” and two women with their arms around each other who say, “We’re lesbians.” Another man says, “I’m a man who loves women—I’m straight.”
Then a character with a purple side-swept hairdo tells us, “I can love people of any gender—I’m queer.”
The inclusion here is terrific, but hold on a moment. That line isn’t incorrect, per se, but for young readers first encountering the term, it’s misleading. giving us only one meaning of “queer” among many within the LGBTQ community. “Queer” can also mean “genderqueer” and it can be a catchall phrase for LGBTQ people as a whole (as the authors must realize, since one section of the backmatter for adults is titled “Queer Love,” using it in the latter sense).
The more specific word for the concept of loving people of any gender, but which isn’t in the book at all, is “bisexual.” If the publishers wanted to avoid the word “sexual” in a book for young children, then “bi” would be fine (and is even preferred by some bi people). There are more bi people than people of all other LGBTQ identities combined. To avoid this word in a book about different types of love and relationships feels like a huge oversight. (One could also use the terms “pansexual” or “pan,” but those aren’t in the book either.)
This is a shame, because the rest of the book is actually quite good. It goes on to discuss how love can be something you “just feel” or how it can be hard and require practice to learn how to show love. It also acknowledges that feelings can change, and that it can be hard to love someone who is far away. One spread even notes that not all families are loving, which isn’t fair, and that no one should hurt you and say that it’s because they love you.
The last few spreads discuss different family types, married and unmarried, living together or not, with kids or without. It explains that while “People have always made families in lots of different ways,” “people in power” have made “unfair rules” about who can love each other or be a family. It asks readers what we can do to make things more fair, as the illustrations show a school community changing a “Father’s Day BBQ” sign to one reading “Family Day BBQ.”
The backmatter offers further information for adults about discussing all of the above concepts with children, as well as topics like “When Love Is Hard” (e.g., after separation from a loved one), “Nurturing Healthy Relationships,” “Queer Love,” and “Heteronormativity & Resistance.” The latter section is particularly welcome, although it uses but never defines the word “cisgender,” which might be confusing for adults not familiar with the term. (While the backmatter refers adults to the series website FirstConversations.com for “a full list of LGBTQIA+ terms and definitions” as well as the history of and strategies for resisting heteronormativity, that information is not yet there as of this writing.)
There’s enough good stuff in this book that I still recommend it, but I encourage adults to offer their own comment to young readers that “Sometimes those who love people of any gender call themselves ‘bi.'”
Available as a board book or regular hardcover.
