This story by Drag Queen Story Hour founder Michelle Tea stars a brother-sister pair who love playing dress-up in gender creative ways—but they’re hesitant to go outside in these outfits. The drag queen Morgana then magically appears and helps them learn to celebrate being themselves, as a rolling, Seuss-ian rhyme carries the story along: “She told us that clothes aren’t for girls or for boys,/and the same goes for hobbies and colors and toys!” Morgana then takes them in a flying car to a nearby library for a diverse and fun-filled story time.
The gender-expansive message is unfailingly positive, but the book would have been improved by an afterward for adult readers. A reference to “Mama Ru” will likely go over the heads of anyone not familiar with RuPaul’s Drag Race (and it’s the families not familiar with it who may be most in need of this book’s teachings). Another page names RuPaul and other drag queens—Hot Mess, Flawless Sabrina, and more—offering a sense of drag history, but readers will have to seek elsewhere for further information about who they are and what their contributions have been. Similarly, while there are references to other LGBTQ-inclusive and gender-expansive children’s books (“Tango’s a penguin with two penguin daddies,/Oliver Button’s a star who prevails over baddies”), the full titles and authors (in an afterward) would have been helpful for adults not in the know. Still, the book would work splendidly at an actual Drag Queen Story Hour with a reader who can explain such things—and the message that “when you are given unbridled creation,/it leads to a playful rainbow liberation” is bound to inspire.
