This collection of “modern fables” was inspired by real stories of family and gender diversity in the animal world. These are not really stories about actual animal behavior, however (for that, try It’s a Wild World and/or Love in the Wild); authors Francesco Maddaloni and Guido Radaelli say in a preface that the tales are meant to be fables, with “a moral, or lesson about right versus wrong, taught through the actions of the characters.” Some of the tales are poorly executed, however, with messages that (perhaps unintentionally) feel problematic.
We see two male flamingoes who pair up and hatch an egg given to them by another flamingo couple; a cygnet whose parents have separated, and who learns that they and their new partners still love him; two families of puppies whose dads have left and whose moms pair up to care for them; a father seahorse who must care for his babies with the help of his father after their mother gets caught in a fishing net, never to be seen again. Those stories are fine, if a little wordy, though some young readers may be disturbed by the loss of the mother seahorse.
The messages in some of the tales are more questionable, however. A sheep that was raised by a dog and thinks she is a dog learns the truth of her birth and goes to find her birth parents, only to decide that sheep are boring and “all the same” and she’d rather continue to be a dog. The message that her dog mom is her “forever mom” is affirming of adoptive families, but the complete rejection of the sheeps’ life feels like it could offend some transracial adoptees, who may not want to be so dismissive of their birth heritage. And since many transracial adoptees are people of color adopted by White parents, saying that their birth community looks “all the same” echoes the racial slur that all people of any non-White racial identity “look the same.”
In another story, a dolphin who is pink, not grayish blue, must learn to appreciate her uniqueness—but it is only after showing the other dolphins how much she knows in class that “no one notices her candy-colored skin anymore.” This feeds into the harmful idea that marginalized people must be exceptional in order to be accepted (which may be an unfortunate reality, but should not be something to promote). Furthermore, the idea that no one notices her skin color reinforces the harmful idea that people shouldn’t see race or skin color, when in fact we must see it in order to acknowledge systemic inequities and actually combat racism. (See “Why saying ‘I don’t see race at all’ just makes racism worse,” by Heather McGhee, among many other articles on the topic.)
The final tale is of a lion named Amani whose “body is female” but who grows a mane like a male lion and feels like one, too. The other lionesses try to lick down the mane to make it less prominent. Amani is “ashamed … of her desire to be a male lion.” After Amani saves some cubs from a hyena, “she is afraid because she has broken the law of the savannah. She has behaved like a male.” She fearfully awaits the consequences. The male head of the pride, however, says, “You are not a lioness who acts like a lion. You are a lion,” and makes Amani co-leader of the pride. Amani’s name changes to Uzoma, “which means ‘the right way.'”
This could be read as a tale of accepting one’s true gender (although I wish Uzoma didn’t need the male head of the pride for validation), but let’s look more closely at the Botswanan “lionesses” with manes (by which I assume the article at the link means lions with female genitalia) that inspired the tale. Turns out these lions have higher levels of certain hormones, which contribute to the development of more typically male traits, like manes. In other words, these lions are intersex—so the book’s phrasing “body is female” doesn’t really work. It feels akin to the phrases “biological female” (or “biological male”) that many people are moving away from these days, as they don’t fully capture the real range of biological variation. (See Planned Parenthood’s explanation for more.) It would have been better for the book to say that the rest of the pride “thought she was female” rather than saying “her body is female.”
Also, if Uzoma is a lion and not a lioness, then male pronouns should be used, at least after the proper name change—but even in that sentence, the book uses a female pronoun: “From now on, her name will no longer be Amani, but Uzoma.”
I also have to take exception to the authors’ assertion that the tales “touch on a modern-day topic—unconventional families.” One only needs to go back to the biblical story of Abraham and Sarah, who had one of their two children via what we would now call surrogacy, and to other similar tales of their descendants, or to look at the practice of adoption in ancient Rome, to know that (un)conventionality is in the eye of the beholder, and that family diversity has a long history.
While some of the stories in this book have positive messages, the execution of others is questionable enough that readers may wish to skip this one.
