Minnesota authors blaze trails with children’s books that address gender

A T-shirt I saw at last year’s Pride festival has stuck with me: “Don’t assume you know my gender.”

It’s a simple message but it resonates, speaking as a he/him who often has made assumptions about the genders of others. The idea that gender and identity exist on continua that we can’t intuit simply by looking at someone, is popping up everywhere: Signs at every cash register at my co-op urge customers to use gender-neutral terms unless they are certain of the cashier’s gender. Ad agencies are advising clients that “the future is non-binary.” Many awards, including the Independent Spirits for filmmakers, have shifted to nongendered categories.

Books, including those written by two Minnesotans for young readers, are getting in on that.

“A Family Tree,” for kids 4-8, is a picture book about a child who develops an attachment to a tree at their grandparents’ house. The child, Francis, is drawn by Kate Gardiner in a way that Francis could be a boy or girl (the character is inspired by several Francises in Grand Marais author Staci Lola Drouillard’s family). The tree is female, establishing its kinship with Mother Nature, but the book never specifies the child’s gender, which is so nimbly done that it’s not until you finish the book that you may think, “Gosh, is Francis a boy or girl?”

“I’m thrilled at that: A. You didn’t notice right away, and B. You did notice, eventually,” said Drouillard. Her decision not to gender Francis was inspired by the fact that, in the Ojibwe language, there are no “she” or “he” pronouns (her father is an enrolled member of the Grand Portage band of Lake Superior Chippewa and she is currently studying the language). Instead, “wiin” is used for any gender.

Drouillard said she hopes featuring a gender-free character opens the book up to a diverse readership.

“I also wanted the book and, really, anything I write to be welcoming and inclusive,” said Drouillard, a Minnesota Book Award winner for “Seven Aunts.” “When you start to identify gender in such a way, I feel like it cuts out readers sometimes. And that’s the last thing I wanted. This story is for everyone.”

Alison McGhee’s “Telephone of the Tree” is slightly more explicit. The “The Opposite of Fate” writer’s new book is about tree-loving 10-year-olds Ayla and Kiri. In the summer during which the book is set, Ayla misses Kiri, who has gone away for reasons that aren’t immediately clear. As Ayla comes to terms with her friend’s absence, the Minnesota writer makes sure we notice that everyone uses they/them pronouns for Kiri — the assumption being that Kiri is nonbinary.

Like Drouillard, McGhee’s book is not about gender but acknowledges there are multiple options. Said McGhee, a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner, “It’s not a story about a child who’s nonbinary. It’s more the story of a world where that doesn’t matter.”

Also like Drouillard, McGhee hopes to offer solace to kids who are puzzling things out.

When the usage of nongendered pronouns began to hit the mainstream a few years ago, there was a lot of talk about how confusing it could be (talk that ignored that we’ve used they/them for centuries when we didn’t know the gender of someone we were speaking about). But books that help youngsters understand that “he” and “she” are not the only possibilities could be a way to make sure young people become leaders in understanding gender and identity — in the same way that it’s common to see a child reared on devices helping their grandparent with an iPad issue.

Drouillard said she wouldn’t have written “Family Tree” the same way 15 years ago, but she has learned a lot about gender and identity since then. In reading the book to groups of kids, that feeling has been affirmed, especially since some of those kids may not know where they fit on the gender spectrum and have no need to figure that out yet.

“For some kids, being confronted by gender can sometimes be a difficult thing or a confusing thing, so I just took that out of the story,” said Drouillard. “Reading the story now, out loud, in mixed company, it feels comforting to me because it does feel welcoming. It does feel like gender doesn’t have to be a deciding factor in whether or not someone is going to relate to the story.”

Obviously, not everyone in the world — or every place in the world — is on the same page. Germany, for instance, where the translator for “Telephone of the Tree” contacted McGhee because German doesn’t yet have a they/them equivalent to indicate nonbinary folks.

“They would have had to invent whole new words, it turns out, and if you’re inventing new words, the story gets lost,” McGhee said. “So I said, ‘It’s fine with me. This is not the heart of the story. I just wanted to normalize this for as many readers as possible. But if it would mess up everything, go ahead and choose boy or girl.’ So I let go of that for the German edition.”

Both McGhee and Drouillard said their publishers embraced their new books enthusiastically, as a way to acknowledge how common various gender expressions have become. Which is just what they are hoping for.

“That’s the way I want the world to work,” said McGhee. “So why not write it that way?”