We are lucky enough to have received a terrific piece from author, Jessica Walton about her just-released picture book, Introducing Teddy. Welcome to Reading Time. Jess.
This week, my picture book Introducing Teddy, illustrated by the wonderfully talented Dougal MacPherson (15minutedrawings on Instagram and Twitter) will be released in the US, UK and Australia. It will eventually also be released in Germany, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Brazil and Japan. This seems completely unbelievable to me, considering that twelve months ago I wrote the book for an audience of just two: my dad Tina and my one-year-old son.
Dad came out as transgender about five years ago, and a few years later when my wife was pregnant I started looking for picture books that represented the diversity in my very rainbow family. We didn’t want to read our son picture books full of the same straight white able-bodied couple with two kids. I wanted single parents, muslim families, adopted kids, parents in wheelchairs, grandparents looking after kids, indigenous families, kids on crutches, girls and boys wearing pants and dresses, refugee families, gay parents, transgender characters, just… diversity! You know, the diversity we see in the real world every day.
You might think this is something that only ‘diverse’ families would need to do, so that our children feel represented when they read picture books, but think about the message that a bookshelf full of the same type of family sends to any child. I think all children need to read 
about different kinds of children and families, so they understand that no family is the norm, or the default. If they end up with a disability (like I did at nine years old), or come out as gay or transgender, they’ll have read these books and had conversations with their parents during their formative years that tell them ‘You are ok! Hooray for diversity!’ If they meet peers at school and university, colleagues at work, or friends at parties who are disabled, LGBTI or from a culture or religion different to theirs, they won’t bat an eyelid.
While we got a good collection of diverse picture books together, the one thing I couldn’t find was books aimed at young children with transgender characters. How was this a taboo in 2016? Why was there this gap, this lack? I knew there were families with trans kids, parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents so where were the books about these families? I decided I’d write one. I thought about what Errol would enjoy reading (teddy bears? Tick! Kids named after my son and niece? Tick!) and then I thought carefully about how I could honour my dad’s courage in coming out and model the acceptance and love that LGBTI people deserve from their friends and families in the story. My son and my dad: that’s who I wrote the book for. I didn’t even consider going to a mainstream publisher; I’d just bought my first book from the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, a picture book about donor conceived children with lesbian parents, so I thought I’d try crowdfunding too. If Introducing Teddy had ended up as a failed Kickstarter project, but had sat on my son’s bookshelf proudly next to his other books, I’d have been happy with that.
Thankfully the Kickstarter went well. First it rolled across social media thanks to word of mouth. I did my best to get in touch with LGBTI groups from around the world to let them know I’d written the book, and asking if they’d be willing to share it on their Facebook or twitter page. On a whim I also visited the Facebook page of my favourite author, Neil Gaiman, and told him about Introducing Teddy. He tweeted about it, which still blows my mind. Something little for him meant a HUGE deal for us. Dougal and I watched the orders start pouring in, and then we started getting calls from international media. We were so unprepared for that level of exposure, but it was an amazing experience. We reached our target in six days and by the end of the campaign we’d doubled it. We were contacted by an agent from Writers House in New York, and then we got picked up by Bloomsbury Publishing. It has been an amazing year.
My partner is pregnant again, and this time we’re expecting a girl (though we’re very wary of assigning gender, so we’ll keep an open mind!) I’ve already bought picture books like I’m a Girl by Yasmeen Ismail and The A to Z Guide to Jobs for Girls by Charles C Dowd for my son, so I know my daughter will have lots of great messages about gender in the books we read her. I’m working on a picture book with a nonbinary character too, to make sure my kids know that gender identity doesn’t just mean male or female.
My hope is that one day soon our book will be one of many picture books for young children with transgender characters, and that I won’t need to go looking for diversity in picture books at all. We’ll get there pretty soon I think. If Bloomsbury can be massively enthusiastic about a book starring a transgender teddy bear (and seriously, they’re so excited about it), I feel very good about the future of diverse picture books.
1 Comment
I can’t wait to read this book. The front cover is very appealing and I love the simple idea of the bow . As a teacher I am aware that there are children children that will greatly benefit from, as see themselves represented in this story. Great interview with the author too!