The Pronoun Book

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JAN 31, 2022

eaturing plentiful speech bubbles, this spare board book enforces the message that gender identity and pronouns cannot be derived from appearance. The first two spreads make the premise clear: "How do you know what someone wants to be called?" a light brown–skinned child queries. "Ask," Ayala-Kronos writes, as the child runs toward a variously inclusive crowd, members of whom relay their pronouns via subsequent spreads (on one page, for example, six people indicate themselves, each proclaiming, "They"). Portraying a cast of varying ability, age, hair color, hairstyle, religion, skin tone, and size, Tirado's boldly colored, smoothly outlined digital art, set against vibrant monochrome backgrounds, celebrates myriad ways people express gender across intersections. A concluding vision of unity ("Us!") involves a park party where everyone wears pronoun badges; while the neopronouns that many partygoers proudly sport aren't discussed, this straightforward handling capably introduces the youngest readers to pronouns and gender identity. Ages up to 3.