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[ccbe.net]GLBT Literature for Children and Young Adults
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From: Nancegar at aol.com <Nancegar>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 11:29:12 EDT
Given the occasional embarrassment (mentioned in a couple of posts) on the part of kids faced with books about GLBT kids and issues, I'd like to add a suggestion to Meg Rothstein's excellent one about bookmarks saying "Take this book. Bring it back and reshelve it. No checkout necessary." I know of a school library that, instead of a bookmark, has a special sticker on the spines of books that some kids are embarrassed to take out publically, not necessarily just GLBT books. The sticker (which I think may just be a colored dot, but I'm not sure) is a sign that the book may be taken out and returned on the honor system without being checked out.
One comment -- Like Hollis, I am very disturbed by Olgy's statement: "As painful as it may be for a transgender teen to navigate culture's waters...it's much more painful for those around him/her as they're affected by that person's journey." Realizing slowly when one is a child and a teen that one is gay or bisexual is difficult enough, even in the best of all worlds, for reasons that I'm pretty sure Olgy can understand. But when one realizes or suspects that one has been born into the wrong body, the difficulty is even more complex and even less likely to be understood by one's family and one's peers. The questions transgender kids have to face are tremendous -- imagine being faced with the question of which bathroom to use, whether to wear a skirt or pants, whether to change one's name, whether to seriously contemplate hormones and surgery, how to explain oneself to people -- and all of that in addition to dealing with the confusion, questions, fears, and emotional and physical batterings faced by in one way or another by many GLB kids! Surely handling all those issue, especially as a kid, is at least as hard and painful as the admittedly very difficult and very painful related issues faced by a transgender kid's family! Does this have to be a contest? Surely both journeys are hard, and they are hard in somewhat different ways. Nothing can be served by trying to decide whether the pain faced by those who have to adjust to being transgender is greater or lesser than the pain faced by those having a transgender child or sibling!
Nancy Garden
______________________________________ Please visit my website: www.nancygarden.com Budding Writers #12 is up!
Received on Thu 10 Jun 2004 10:29:12 AM CDT
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 11:29:12 EDT
Given the occasional embarrassment (mentioned in a couple of posts) on the part of kids faced with books about GLBT kids and issues, I'd like to add a suggestion to Meg Rothstein's excellent one about bookmarks saying "Take this book. Bring it back and reshelve it. No checkout necessary." I know of a school library that, instead of a bookmark, has a special sticker on the spines of books that some kids are embarrassed to take out publically, not necessarily just GLBT books. The sticker (which I think may just be a colored dot, but I'm not sure) is a sign that the book may be taken out and returned on the honor system without being checked out.
One comment -- Like Hollis, I am very disturbed by Olgy's statement: "As painful as it may be for a transgender teen to navigate culture's waters...it's much more painful for those around him/her as they're affected by that person's journey." Realizing slowly when one is a child and a teen that one is gay or bisexual is difficult enough, even in the best of all worlds, for reasons that I'm pretty sure Olgy can understand. But when one realizes or suspects that one has been born into the wrong body, the difficulty is even more complex and even less likely to be understood by one's family and one's peers. The questions transgender kids have to face are tremendous -- imagine being faced with the question of which bathroom to use, whether to wear a skirt or pants, whether to change one's name, whether to seriously contemplate hormones and surgery, how to explain oneself to people -- and all of that in addition to dealing with the confusion, questions, fears, and emotional and physical batterings faced by in one way or another by many GLB kids! Surely handling all those issue, especially as a kid, is at least as hard and painful as the admittedly very difficult and very painful related issues faced by a transgender kid's family! Does this have to be a contest? Surely both journeys are hard, and they are hard in somewhat different ways. Nothing can be served by trying to decide whether the pain faced by those who have to adjust to being transgender is greater or lesser than the pain faced by those having a transgender child or sibling!
Nancy Garden
______________________________________ Please visit my website: www.nancygarden.com Budding Writers #12 is up!
Received on Thu 10 Jun 2004 10:29:12 AM CDT
