ABSTRACT
“Mommy, I like this one. Can we read it together?” my friend’s eight-year-old son asked when seeing about 20 children’s picturebooks with transgender characters spread out over the kitchen counters. The book he chose, All I Want To Be Is Me, written and illustrated by Phyllis Rothblatt (2011), like the powerful books Whitmore and Angleton read with their preschoolers, reclaims early childhood literacy learning by embracing all gender identities and presenting children who enact agency. In this extension, I discuss my gender nonconforming background, offer some problematic themes that govern many of the available books about gender diversity, and make suggestions for choosing powerful books that reclaim early childhood literacies.
