This interview originally appeared in the May/June 2020 Horn Book Magazine as part of the Publishers’ Previews: Diversity Five Ways, an advertising supplement that allows participating publishers a chance to each highlight a book from its current list. They choose the books; we ask the questions.

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This book’s narrator has a Maddy: a parent who’s not Mom, not Dad, but everything both and in-between.

1. When do children tend to start asking questions about gender?

Children have a basic understanding of gender as early as eighteen to twenty-four months old, and typically label their own at about three. This is true even for those whose gender identity doesn’t match the gender label they were given at birth. Children might ask questions when they’re confronted with a situation that challenges the gender binary. Answering those questions directly and honestly helps them better understand gender as a spectrum. Children who are gender-creative may have questions at an early age about the reactions others have to them, or about the physical and emotional feelings they’re experiencing.

2. What is your favorite “in-between” space?

Creative space — that time-suspended place between reality and fantasy.

3. How do we help children of nonbinary parents navigate questions from their friends and friends’ parents?

Children should never feel they have to navigate these questions by themselves. Parents who identify as nonbinary (and those who don’t) can open the lines of communication with other parents, teachers, and other adults, and help prepare their children for questions friends might ask. If a friend at their house for a playdate asks a question, that’s a perfect opportunity for a parent to support their child in answering.

4. How might your own childhood have been different if there’d been more picture books about queer identities?

I was a child of the 1970s and 1980s. There were no picture books about queer identities. I can’t even imagine how different it would have been if those had been available.

5. What is your considered opinion of the spork?

I carry a metal spork with me (as well as a metal straw) so I don’t have to use single-use plasticware or straws when I get food on the go. It’s multi-functional and eco-friendly!

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