I know I just said this was a review blog but….bear with me on this one. I’ll keep the library’s name out of it for now.
This book was given to ***** library as a bundle of books to libraries in the whole area. The point of these books was to add more culturally diverse materials into the collection. These books were chosen by a committee, gone through a process and “graded” on their appropriateness for their desired audience. Now I’m finding out that two months after this book was introduced into multiple collections in the area they are all being pulled. One person brought the book to an administrator and now it is being questioned in spite of it having already gone through an approval process.
“It Feels Good To Be Yourself” is an excellent example of the way times are a-changin’. And it’s wonderful. Theresa Thorn and Noah Grigni combine informative text with transformative artwork into a guide for guardians and children alike to navigate through what may be a strange new world. The book explains gender expression in such a way for adults and children to understand and includes up-to-date terminology to go along with it–such as “gender expression,” “non-binary,” and “cis.”
Looks like this turned into kind of a review after all…but I’m not quite finished.
It’s so important to have books like this on the shelves. There are kids and adults who will not only feel represented by this type of literature, but validated. About 42% of LGBT+ youth feel unaccepted by their community. They are twice as likely to get bullied or physically abused as others their age. https://tinyurl.com/yddr44nj
Representation is important. Validity and Visibility are important. I know it sounds corny, but kids are our future and they deserve to be who they are.
Reviews on culturally diverse books. 
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