WThumb our son Sam was six years old, he was attacked in the boy’s bathroom at school. Sam wore khaki pants and a Gray Star Wars t-shirt, but had long hair and wore his favorite pink fangs. Another student watched Sam, decided that Sam was a girl and started shouting and kicking Sam.
It was not only at school that Sam had problems in the bathroom. We could not send Sam safely to himself any public bathroom. In playgrounds and zoos, in airports and restaurants, other children – and often adults – had the need to tell Sam that he was in the wrong place. Sometimes they were polite. They were not. And Sam? He was a little child who just needed to pee.
After Sam has undergone years of bathroom confrontations, we wrote the children’s picture book Jacob’s room to choose. In the book, Jacob and her friend, Sophie, are chased from the bathrooms to school. Jacob tries to use the boys’ room and Sophie the Girls’s Room, but other children decide that they do not belong to these places according to their clothes. Jacob teacher and Sophie realizes that there is a problem and sets up an impromptu lesson in basic courtesy in bathrooms. Like the teacher, we, as parents and writers of children’s books, believe that everyone should be able to use the bathroom safely – if they seem to expect them to do it or not.
Jacob’s room to choose is currently prohibited in several American states and in the country of Malaysia.
Jacob’s room to choose is one of the nine children’s pictures for children named in Mahmoud c. TaylorA trial brought in the county of Montgomery, md., by parents who are upset by the fact that their children have seen books like ours in their classrooms – books that teach self -acceptance and kindness. These books were added to the Linguistic Arts Program in the school district after a thoughtful and inclusive community process to increase the number of books that reflect the various lived experiences of the district children. April 22, Mahmoud c. Taylor will be argued before the United States Supreme Court, in a case involving the constitutionality of inclusive education. The complainants argue that not being able to withdraw their children by investigation involving books with LGBTQIA + characters constitutes a violation of their right to freely exercise their religion under the first amendment of the Constitution. They say that an irreparable damage will come to their children to see the diversity of people and families represented in these image books.
Find out more: Prohibiting books is not only morally bad. It’s as unhealthy
We believe that people have a fundamental right to practice and express their faith, but not when it darkens others. Allowing families to opt for their children to read our books harvested children whose life and families are reflected in these books. The “withdrawal” policies clearly communicate to the classrooms of children who behave decently to all human beings are optional and tell the children who are different that they and their families do not deserve respect for all their classmates.
We know how significant it is for children to be represented in books. When Sam was four years old and the only boy we knew who wanted to wear a dress, we looked for books on boys like him. We found none. It was a solitary period – for him and us. So we wrote our first book, Jacob’s new dressTo help children like our son know that they are not alone – and to help all children learn to be nice. Parents, teachers and librarians often explain to us how this book has improved the lives of children whose care.
Sometimes it seems that telling stories is not enough. This small rectangle of cardboard and paper and ink is not up to all of hateful rhetoric on the books somehow injured the children. But then we remember that our stories are so powerful that some people really scare it. So afraid that they lie on the content of the books, calling them “radical indoctrination” and “pornography” and “child abuse”. So afraid that they are trying to hide them. So frightened by books that are just nice.
We believe that each student of a primary school class deserves kindness and respect. Accept others as they are is a path to a world where we can live together in peace, whatever religion.
