Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Let’s Explore Self-Identity

Who they are – what they are, and how this informs how we interface with the world and others.

Some identities can change. Challenges can shift. This is a conversation we must revisit regularly. So let’s dig into it again this month!

Instead of a tightly packed itinerary of the shit we owe others because of who and where we were born to – what if we woke up to a single question: ‘what feels possible today?

I’m dreaming futures and wondering what we really need to learn before the kids enter an adulthood – when most of today’s jobs will be automated. I’m less concerned with teaching my kids how to code and compute integrals, and more concerned with teaching the Earthquakes how to be more human in ways machines can’t.

Supporting our kids means helping them discover what it means to be human

As we rethinking our relationship with computers, animals, the planet, other humans, and all those permutations of cosmic dust, our kids’ abilities to survive and thrive will depend less on their ability to perform as cogs in a machine. Which means guiding them to discover healthier models of interdependence, community development, and keeping their shit together in an age of overwhelm and uncertainty.

Ages 4+

Ages 4-8

Ages 4+

Read:

• Where Oliver Fits:
  Validating for kids who use masking and assimilation to hide who they are in search of belonging
• A Normal Pig:
  Recognizing the identities that define us means acknowledging how we’re different than others (I don’t usually describe myself as a four-limbed human earthling). This is the same impulse that causes folks with privilege to identify as the ‘default’ human, whereas folks who hold targeted and marginalized identities are sidelined as a deviation from the norm.
• Swift Fox All Along:
  Who defines what it means to be ‘enough’ in our identities? Particularly for groups who have been segregated, divided, and targeted by cultural genocide, one of the first steps of regaining our power and gathering for collective action means acknowledging the spectrum of who gets to claim their own identity. Even within our own groups, we’re often held back by supremacist notions of of purity.
  (And no I’m not saying folks with privilege have the right to appropriate targeted cultures for attention and profit. Be reasonable about this.)

Watch / Listen:

Discuss:

• What identities do we hold?
• What stories does the media, folks in our community, and our society tell us about people like us?
• What responsibilities do these identities carry?
• What does it look like to accept ourselves despite the stories telling us that some folks are more worthy than others?
• What does it look like to accept others, even when we disagree?
• How do we accept and support others while maintaining our own boundaries and respecting the boundaries of others?

Activities

• What Makes Me Me? Workbook zine, inspired by middle schoolers from Burton International Academy
• Bold Portraits by Beautiful Pie, inspired by the artist Kehinde Wiley
• All About Me With Selfies

More resources to dig deeper:

• Stories for Kids Examining Self-Identity, Acceptance & Worth
• The Myth of Racial Purity
• Kids stories to unpack Envy & Jealousy
• Stories for kids who feel left out
• Finding our own type of leadership
• Exploring our racial identities
• Recognizing our privilege
• Smashing wealth inequality series – what it means to see past the constructs of good and bad, superior and stigmatized, reconciling division and inclusion.
• Kids Stories On Transitions: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Accepting Change
• All Bodies Are Good Bodies
• Wrestling With Insecurity with ‘Escargot’
• Books for Kids Examining Self-Identity, Acceptance & Worth

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Let’s Explore Immigrant Heritage Month

For Immigrant Heritage Month, let’s revisit those discussion questions from above in relation to immigration.

What relationship and identities do we hold in relation to the land we call home right now?

For instance, families can be a mix of Indigenous, immigrants documented or undocumented, displanted people, settlers, visitors, transnationally adopted, diaspora, third-culture kids, nomadic, seasonal migrants, etc.

Some groups even have ethnicity-specific labels, such as ABC or FOB (American-Born Chinese or Fresh-off-the Boat) which might be used as a derogatory label or worn with pride. Many immigrants and descendants use generational descriptors – such as first-generation immigrants, 1.5 generation (for people who immigrated in late childhood), and so-on.

The point is to unpack the language and give words to your kids to help them self-identify where they fit into the scheme of human migration so they can choose how they identify.

What stories does the media, folks in our community, and our society tell us about people like us?

Which groups hold the power to give or take away other groups’ rights? Who is seen as the ‘default,’ and who is ‘the other?’ Whose stories are taught in schools and celebrated? Whose ancestors, heritages, and traditions are taught as ‘our history’ (ex: American history in American schools), and which groups are relegated to World History or not spoken of at all?

What responsibilities do these identities carry?

Does our nationality allow us to skip past challenges other groups have to deal with? Which challenges do we face because of our nationality?

What does it look like to make a home here? To be accepted as a community member, not a ‘foreigner’?

What does it look like to welcome others to our neighborhood, even when we disagree?

How do we accept and support those who have been here longer than us, and those who are just arriving? What fears do we hold about how our home could change?

Books to explore immigration

Since we’re making this a personal exploration, the books you’re gonna want to read with your kids should be unique to your family. For example, our Chinese-Irish kiddos can find reflection of our experiences, and the immigrant stories of our ancestors in books like:

Ages 4+

Ages 4.5+

Ages 4-8

• Paper Son for Chinese American immigrants affected by the Chinese Exclusion Act.
• Small Beauties  for Irish American immigrants/refugees forced here during the Great Hunger.
• Where Are You From?  for multiracial people treated as ‘the other’ in their own birthplace.

Watch:

More resources to dig deeper:

If you’re unsure or unwilling to talk about your family’s nationality (your kids edification isn’t worth re-traumatizing family members!), skip past the family self-reflection, and discuss immigration rights as a general issue. Here are some stories and tools for that:

• Immigrant Solidarity Family Action Toolkit
• Immigrants Belong Here: Books Helping Kids Advocate For Human Rights
• How We Reinforce The Model Minority Myth with Polar Bear Island
• Why We Repeat Atrocities: Stories of Japanese Internment
• Overcoming False Scarcity & Xenophobia with ‘Shelter’
• Kids Stories Dismantling Xenophobia
• #OwnVoices Immigration Stories By 1st & 2nd Generation Immigrants
• Luminary Brain Trust Family Movie Night: Portraying the 2nd-generation immigrant experience with Ron’s Gone Wrong

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Let’s Explore Assigned Sex, Gender & Sexuality

Ages 2-7

Ages 2.5+

Ages 6+

Lots of folks are still confused about the relationship between gender and sex. Or even gender and sexuality. So let’s get on the same page.

1. Talking with kids about the gender spectrum.
2. Destigmatizing and normalizing fluid, nonbinary & creative genders.
3. Destigmatizing and normalizing transgender identities.

Okay great – at this point you know there’s a small correlation between gender and sex, but that assigned sex at birth doesn’t determine your gender. Cool? Let’s move on to understanding sexuality, and how that, too, is not tied to gender!

1. Understanding reproduction (sex for making new humans)
2. Understanding sexuality & masturbation (sex for recreation), and how to set boundaries.
3. Go back and revisit the books on consent and body boundaries! Often! ‘Cause our boundaries are constantly in flux!
4. Still got steam? Pick up a copy of How Mamas Love Their Babies and discuss how sex workers are people who deserve human rights, safety, and career autonomy.

Take Action

• Identify and resist anti-trans legislation in your state

Discuss

• I think I might be… Written by LGBTQ youth, these resources provide answers for young people thinking about how to express their gender and sexuality.

From ‘We Are Little Feminists: Families’

Donate a Little Feminist Book Club subscription to your local community center to build our kids bookshelves with LGBTQiA2S+ representation.

Whenever I find new children’s biographies about kids navigating LGBTQiA2S+ identities, I tell our partner, Little Feminist Book Club about it right away.

Over the years, we’ve filled neighborhoods with LGBTQiA2S+ stories including We Are Little Feminist Families, My Rainbow, Swift Fox All Along, My Footprints & Sylvia and Marsha Start a Revolution.

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Stonewall Riots & LGBTQiA2S+ Pride Month

Ages 4-8

Ages 4-8

Ages 3-8

When is it?

• June 28th is the Anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion
• LGBTQiA2S+ Pride month lasts through June

Read

• Sylvia and Marsha Start a Revolution
• Ho’onani Hula Warrior
• M is for Mustache

Watch:

• With older kids (maybe 8+): The History of Queer-Coding
• With kids 5+ Kapaemahu
• Five Fun Facts about the Stonewall Rebellion
• What does the ‘2S’ in LGBTQiA2S stand for?
• Queer Kid Stuff

Discuss

• Notice rainbow-washing in ads and shopping aisles.
  Talk about which companies and organizations support LGBTQiA2S+ people year-round, and which stick rainbows on things once a year to sell more rubbish.
• Discuss the able/thin/whitewashing of LGBTQiA2S+ history and heroes.
  Notice which books and shows are okay with portraying the history of Pride, but only when focusing on white, thin, able-bodied, etc. heroes.
• Discuss LGBTQiA2S+ history before Stonewall.
  How has settler-colonialism narrowed our understanding of gender and sexuality? Is Pride something new, or is it something we’re reclaiming?

Reflect

Download the Infinite Pride Color Page & find more actions from Reflection Press

Take Action (Adults):

• Identify and resist anti-trans legislation in your state
• Start a rainbow club
• Adults: Sign up for free virtual training: Bystander Intervention to stop LGBTQ+ Harassment via Right To Be.

Dig deeper with these resources:

• LGBTQiA2S+ History for Kids
• Dismantling Cissexism In Kidlit – Maker Spotlight with Maya & Matthew of Reflection Press
• Queer Rainbow Children’s Books By Indigenous, Black & Brown Authors
• 6 Kids Books For Trans Day of Resilience

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Father’s Day

Ages 1-6

Ages 4-7

Ages 1-4

When is it?

• Third Sunday in June

Read

Read about all kinds of dads! Including validating stories for kids with multiple dads, and without dads.

• Dad by My Side: Involved, primary caretaker dads!
• The Better Tree Fort: Involved, collaborated dads!
• We Are Little Feminist Families: Trans gestational parent dads!
• My Maddy: Nonbinary and gender creative masculine-adjacent parents.
• Boats for Papa: Deceased dads with moms who support kids in maintaining memories and support them through grief.
• A Father Like That: Absent dads, and the co-parents who support kids in navigating abandonment and loss.
• Visiting Day: Incarcerated dads, who kids have to jump through hoops to visit.
• Knock Knock: For children whose fathers have been involuntarily separated from them – for instance from incarceration, death, or deportation.

Watch:

• Have you seen the movie Onward? It’s utterly lovely. Healthy masculinity and dismantling assumptions on the 4.5-member nuclear family for the win!
• Who is watching your kids?

Discuss:

• What responsibilities do dads have in the commercials, movies, shows, and books we consume, versus other genders?
• How does this differ from the roles our caregivers have at home?
• What genders of parents do we most often find doing unpaid community work in our schools and parks?
• When we get together with other families, which parents plan the event? Cook and prepare? Clean up afterward?
• Check the restroom at your favorite stores and restaurants. Which bathrooms have changing tables for caregivers to change diapers? How does its impact the ability of some parents to take primary responsibility for their kids?
• Kids with dads: How often do other adults praise your dad for doing basic dad things, like taking you out in public or caring for you? Why do they do that?

Take Action:

• Support National Bail Out with donations, volunteering, and/or signal-boosting to reunite incarcerated parents with their families, support bail reform, and create resources to support families navigating pretrial detention.

Dig deeper with these resources:

• Raising Tomorrow’s Fathers – Children’s Books With Feminist Dads
• Love is Love is Love – Validating Diverse Family Constellations in Kids Books
• Kids books celebrating healthy masculinity
• Boys who keep house: Raising Sons Who Value Care Work
• Kids books about family member incarceration

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Summer Solstice & Outdoor Accessibility

As the weather heats up, this is the perfect time to talk about barriers to outdoor accessibility for targeted kids. This is scaffolding for the discussions we’ll be having about environmentalism and climate justice in July.

Ages 3-7

Ages 4+

Ages 4-8

Ages 5-11

Ages 7+

Ages 8+

When is it?

• Roughly on the 20th or 21st of June each year

Read

• This Beach is Loud!
  Recognizing barriers to participating in summer activities for kids with disabilities. This doesn’t even touch on access for folks with physical disabilities (sand and mobility devices, dang!) but will get kids started on thinking about how we can make summer outings more accessible for everybody.
• Freedom Summer
  This is my favorite book to help kids understand the difference between individual and systemic racism. It’s also my favorite to show folks. The white-centering/saviorism is a little gross, but until we find something better, this is our most effective story in driving home the subtler impacts of anti-Black racism for younger kids.
• Cannonball
  Helping kids see there’s no one right way to play or participate. This is the You Do You of summer reading and it’s lovely.
• Ruth And The Green Book
  This year, I’ve been talking more with Bellamy of Revolutionary Humans about how to move, travel, or even just gather with kids as mothers of color with disabilities. And we keep coming to the same resigned UGH that ruins every possible location.
  Wouldn’t it be nice to just up and go somewhere without worrying what the racists might do to us once we get there? So this is for all the white folks who are like ‘I had a lovely time at [cheap destination covered in confederate flags], you should visit!’
  While this book is taken from the historical use of a Green book, BIPOC still have to be cautious about where we end up, what we have to go through to get there, and how to navigate the emotional and mental labor who we might encounter, even in this year of Pretending-The-Pandemic-Is-Over. If folks are coming into Chinatown just to attack us, imagine how nerve wracking it can be to enter an unfamiliar and vetted space.
• Panda and Moon Bear (English), or Panda Roja y Oso Lunar (Spanish)
  Healthy sibling relationship, nods to the challenges of growing up bilingual and code-switching, and goofy hijinks that end up inclusive, compassionate, and kind? BUY TEN COPIES, blow this up so Roselló is forced to write a sequel. These characters deserve their own TV series, I would watch the heck out of it.
• Shirley & Jamila Save Their Summer
  Navigating new friendships, judgement, cultural family and social conflict for third-culture kids & immigrant families, transformative justice, and an autistic coded socially abrasive character!!!!
  Also an Asian character whose family actually takes off her damn shoes in the house. (The bar is low for white makers, but this book hits well above and doesn’t tokenize our Asian protagonist.) This is the summer read for Rascals we all needed.

Watch:

• Why so Many Black People in the US Can’t Swim (content warning for a child’s death from drowning)
  Best for kids & adults 9+

Discuss as a family:

• Think of your favorite summer activities.
• What barriers might other kids face accessing these activities?
• How can we make these events more accessible for every kid?

Take Action:

• Tell Congress: Close the Nature Equity Gap and Get More Kids Outside!

And if you stumbled here just looking for quick & easy summer reading, there you go:

• Summer reading lists by age
• Summer Favorites
• Books that legit made my kids laugh
• For pre-readers: Wordless Picture Books To Buy You A Few Minutes of Quiet
• For adults: The Luminary Braintrust’s #GrownUpBookClub reading list

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Juneteenth

Ages 4-8

Ages 5-9

Unlike every other American holiday, I never learned about Juneteenth in history class because I went to a 99.9% white school near Boston, and if there’s one thing white supremacy has a handle on, it’s our education system.

June 19th 1865 was the final end of slavery, when the very last enslaved citizens in Galveston, Texas learned they were free to go. Surprisingly (/sarcasm!), the kind of people who enslaved other humans kept the Emancipation Proclamation under wraps FOR TWO AND A HALF YEARS until a force of Union troops arrived to tell the last people they were finally free.

So our non-Black family observes Juneteenth as a time to acknowledge all the things that went wrong, and discuss how much (much, much) farther we have left to go dismantling anti-Black oppression.

When is it?

• June 19th, marking the 1865 milestone

Read:

• Juneteenth for Mazie
• Opal Lee and What It Means to be Free

Watch

• Alphabet Rockers: Juneteenth music video
• Amber Ruffin Answers Juneteenth FAQs
• What is Juneteenth, and why is it important? (ages 8+)

Discuss

• Why did it take two years for the last enslaved people to learn they were free? Who had the obligation and power to tell them, but refused?
• Why did it Opal Lee have to work for so long to get the US government to recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday?
• Does our city have a Juneteenth celebration we can support or attend?

Take Action: Non-Black Families

• Support Black family generational wealth & Indigenous land rematriation. Donate to a local organization, or if you can’t find one, check out the Detroit Black Farmers Land Fund.
  

Dig deeper with these resources:

• Kids books to dig into the history and significance of Juneteenth
• Kids Books Centering Black Futures
• Creating An Anti-Racist Manifesto With Zetta Elliott
• Exploring Black Futures with ‘Freedom, We Sing’
• No White Saviors: Kids Books About Black Women in US History

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Autistic Pride

You don’t have to be Autistic to celebrate and support Autistic on pride day. Given the symbollic nature of these stories, they work for celebrating all types of neurodiversity.

Ages 3-7

Ages 3-7

Ages 4+

When is it?

• Autistic Pride Day is 6/18

Read

• Red: A Crayon’s Story
• Superluminous
• Pokko And The Drum
• West Meadows Detectives
• Wiggles, Stomps & Squeezes Calm My Jitters Down

Visit

• Understanding the Spectrum: A Comic Strip Explanation

Family Activity & Discussion

• Based on the chart in Understanding the Spectrum, have kids and caregivers each create a spectrum chart of  their abilities and challenges.
• In what ways does each of us need support? What does that support look like?
• In what ways can we use our skills to support each other other?

Take Action

• Share out the AWNN’s Autistic People of Color Fund. Donate if you can.
• Visit the ASAN Action Center, specifically the Action Alerts for scripts and templates to support civil rights legislation for Autistic folks as it comes up. The actions take like 6 seconds and it’s very accessible for folks with executive functioning disabilities.
• Bookmark this page and save it for when your favorite people realize they’re Autistic and need resources. (They’re your favorite people for a reason.)

Dig deeper with these resources:

• Kids Books Celebrating Neurodiversity
• Non-Shamey Guides for Autistic Kiddos
• Just now discovering you’re Autistic? Congrats! Welcome To The Autistic Community!
• Pass the Mic to #ActuallyAutistic BIPOC: studiously compiled by Jules Edwards an an Ojibwe Autistic mother of Autistic kiddos.
• Anti-Ableism & Expanding Our Cultural Perspective A discussion on Autistic communication with Autistic advocates Saunatina Sanchez & Ashia Ray
• Autism Bewareness Day
• Validating Stories for Autistic Kids
• Tilt Podcast with Raising Luminaries: How supremacy divides the Neurodiversity community.
• Books For The Next Generation Of Kind & Brilliant Leaders

Raising Luminaries & Books for Littles are free and accessible for readers who can’t afford a paywall. Since we’re a contribute-what-you can community, I try to fill in the gaps with affiliate links. Posts may contain affiliate links, which allow me to earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check out the full affiliate disclosure along with my statement of accountability.

Gardening As Resistance

Ages 3-6

Ages 4-8

Ages 4-10

Gardening as resistance! Gardening is where I find joy, peace, improved mental health, food-‘Outside” is my favorite room in the house I live in.

 

I somehow forgot that I could use this thing (which already feels exciting and within my wheelhouse) to plant some seeds (HAR!) of resistance with my kids and explain WHY we do the things we do. Thanks for the reminder!

– Cat L., Raising Luminaries Member

When is it?

• Gardening As Self-Care Day is June 6th
• Weed Your Garden Day is 6/13

Read:

• When Grandma Gives You A Lemon Tree
• The Forever Garden
• The Curious Garden

Watch:

What is a Food Desert? via Revolutionary Humans

Discuss:

• How did the plants in our garden end up here?
• As humans, what is our relationship to the soil, water, and the plants we grow?
• When we care for our gardens, are we ‘in charge’ of them, or are we more like friends helping each other out?
• Which plants in our garden are indigenous, and which are naturalized, and which are invasive?
• How can we support our garden so our kids and grandkids can have a good relationship with it later?

Take Action

1. Take pictures of 3 plants that grow near your house.
2. Identify your plants using a plant identifying app, online group, or image search.
3. Are your plants native, invasive, or naturalized?
4. What relationship will you develop with these neighborhood plants when you come across them in the future?
5. Support resistance & land reclaimation projects, like the Detroit Black Farmers Land Fund

More Resources to dig deeper:

• Stories about Collective Action Through Community Gardening
• Stories about Guerilla Gardening as Resistance