June is Pride Month! Pride Month commemorates the Stonewall Riots, which happened June 1969, and was a starting 
point for the Gay Rights movement. The Stonewall Inn, where the riots took place, in New York City recently gained landmark status.
To celebrate, we’ve put together a list of fifteen books that celebrate different gender identities, sexual orientations, families, and ways to be!
In this post, award-winning author and illustrator Maya Gonzalez shares why the picture book Call Me Tree / Llámame árbol is completely gender neutral.
You may or may not notice something different about my book, Call Me Tree. Nowhere in the story are boy/girl pronouns used. No ‘he’ or ‘she’ anywhere! I found it easy to write this way because that’s how I think of kids, as kids, not boy kids or girl kids.
I even requested that no ‘he’ or ‘she’ be used anywhere else in the book, like on the end pages or the back cover when talking about the story. I also asked the publisher to only refer to the main character as a child or kid when they talked about my book out in the world. Because I wanted Call Me Tree to be gender free!
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