If You’re a Kid Like Gavin

h1 July 7th, 2022 by jules



 

If You’re a Kid Like Gavin: The True Story of a Young Trans Activist (Katherine Tegen Books, July 2022), illustrated by J Yang, is written by Gavin Grimm and Kyle Lukoff. You can read Gavin’s true story here at the ACLU’s site. As you’ll see there, in 2015 Gavin sued his school board for discriminating against him in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendments of 1972. (You can read about the case here.) And he won. This celebratory picture book shares Gavin’s story but also serves as a rallying cry for children everywhere to stand up for equity, basic human dignity, and (specifically) the rights of trans students.

Grimm and Lukoff (by the way, take a moment if you have it to read Lukoff’s 2022 Stonewall Award acceptance speech) set this story in an immediate, empowering second-person voice after launching it with: “What are some choices that kids get to make?” The first spread shows Gavin being a kid — eating worms on a dare, biking, sneaking a pet frog into his home. But then in a stark and honest turn, we read:

But what are some choices kids don’t get to make? If you’re a kid like Gavin Grimm (or any other kind of kid), you don’t get to choose who you are. You don’t choose your skin color. Or your parents. Or where you grow up. And if you’re a kid like Gavin Grimm, you don’t choose if you’re a boy or girl. But if you’re transgender like Gavin Grimm, you might choose to talk about it.

This is precisely what Gavin does, and all is well at school where Gavin uses the restroom in the nurses’s offce — that is, until a teacher starts to gossip about his decision to use the boys’ bathroom in the school hallways. Even the principal is on board with this, but the gossip spreads, hateful words that say “he should be stopped, that he should be forced to use the girls’ room, and maybe that he shouldn’t even be at school at all.”

Gavin speaks up at a school board meeting, trying to make people see that “he was just a kid, not a problem to be solved.” A couple of spreads succinctly capture his activism and legal fight, and the book closes with a call to action for child readers, reminding them they can fight for what they believe in and asking directly: “What is a choice that you’re going to make?” It all manages to be truly inspiring and hopeful. Gavin’s triumph is a hard-earned one, and it’s a story that will linger with readers. And it’s a now-more-than-ever kind of story, given that trans rights are continually under attack.

Yang mixes warm and cool colors with beautiful results throughout the book, paints body language and facial expressions particularly well, and with great reverence captures Grimm’s courage and determination. Here are some spreads. …

 


“What are some choices that kids get to make?”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


“But what are some choices kids don’t get to make? …”
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)


 


“Gavin is still working for people like him. …”
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)


 


” … What is a choice that you’re going to make?”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


(Click cover to enlarge)


 

IF YOU’RE A KID LIKE GAVIN: THE TRUE STORY OF A YOUNG TRANS ACTIVIST. Text copyright © 2022 by Gavin Grimm and Kyle Lukoff. Illustrations copyright © 2022 by J Yang and reproduced by permission of the publisher, Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, New York.





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