George is from a family of yetis, with blue faces, shaggy white fur, and a penchant for scaring hikers in the mountains. George is different though, blue faced and covered in pants, coat, and hat. He wants to know, “When will I be a yeti?”
After several of his relatives offer advice on how to be a yeti, his mom asks the key question: “Do you want to be a yeti?”
George realizes that the yeti he imagined he would be isn’t inside him—and that he really wants to be a unicorn. The illustration shows unicorns prancing along a rainbow.
When he realizes he’s sure of this, he sprouts a sparkly horn and hooves. His parents yell in shock, until George explains that he’s not a yeti and never will be. He wants to help people, not chase them. He and his family reach an agreement—they’ll chase the hikers and he will rescue them—and the final scene shows a joyous George doing just that, a rainbow path trailing behind him.
No, there’s no clear LGBTQ inclusion here, but the rainbow/unicorn imagery and theme of being oneself has meant this book is showing up on some LGBTQ-inclusive book lists. It’s not a bad book or message—but I hesitate to say it’s a queer one. Queer kids don’t suddenly transform into a different species when they come out. The idea that queer kids are a different species in fact seems a dangerous notion. As award-winning author and trans man Kyle Lukoff has written:
It’s a common anti-trans taunt to identify as an attack helicopter, or to argue that little kids might identify as dinosaurs but grow out of it. While there’s little strategic value to being on the defensive against opponents who change the rules to suit their will to power, I think that using books that rely on metaphors to teach about identity contributes to that transphobic ideology. These stories lend credence to the idea that gender is a static, immutable, biological reality, and that trans people’s identities are flimsy self-constructions to be humored if not believed….
Gender is a fully human invention, rules that we made up and continually remake. Transgender people are not imagining our way into a different species; we are simply tweaking some of the rules made up by our fellows….
[It] is wrong to force some kids to pierce veils of misdirection to get an approximate reckoning of their lives, while kids who mostly exist within a constellation of privileges can simply crack a book and see their realities reflected.
I encourage you to read Lukoff’s piece in full to understand his whole excellent argument. Use Not Yet a Yeti loosely, if you must, to show the joy in being oneself; I would, however, warn against using it as an analogy for queer lives.
