A loving ode to the many types of families, this book takes readers on a journey to see the wide variety of families, including ones with same-sex and single parents and families of various skin tones, ethnicities, cultures, traditions, and religions. We see families whose members all look similar, and others where they don’t; we see multigenerational families and grandparents serving as parents, and family members with different physical abilities and different gender expressions. Notably, too, we see families created in a variety of ways, from children becoming part of a family when they are born, to those becoming part of a family via foster care or adoption.
The illustrations were created via the AI tool Midjourney, and are full of warm tones and happy families.
My only concern with this otherwise lovely and inclusive book is the spread that on one page shows a mother and daughter in saris, eating a meal together. They are clearly of Southeast Asian descent. The text reads, “Some families wear special clothes.” The opposite spread shows a person with a beard, wearing a Western-style dress, and reading a book to a group of children, also in Western-style clothes. The text here reads, “and some dress in ways they feel most comfortable.” By saying “Some families wear special clothes,” the book implies that the Southeast Asian family wears saris all the time, which may or may not be the case. If they do wear them all the time, that would make them not “special clothes,” but just “clothes.” Either way, the saris could still be the clothes in which they feel most comfortable, so by setting up a contrast here (special vs. comfortable), the book does them a disservice. Showing the same family on both pages, in both special and non-special clothes, and phrasing the text as “Sometimes families…” might have worked better.
Overall, however, this book is a cheerful addition to the growing number of LGBTQ-inclusive books about family types, such as A Family Like Ours, Love Without Bounds, and We Are Little Feminists: Families.
