{"id":27207,"date":"2018-10-23T07:30:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T11:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=27207"},"modified":"2018-10-23T07:30:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T11:30:44","slug":"both-in-one-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=27207","title":{"rendered":"‘Both-in-One’ Thinking: Reflecting on the Gender Prism in Children’s Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before the days of NPR’s Moth<\/a> story hour, I confess I used to think of storytelling among adults as an alarming and generally tedious art form,\u00a0where someone exceptionally ungifted at narrative holds an audience\u00a0captive while they gleefully stroke their beard. My friend Sue Schmidt<\/a>, one of the best storytellers<\/a> I’ve ever heard and the producer of Burlington’s Moth<\/a>, calls this the “Let me tell you a maritime tale” school of storytelling, or “Now I’ll\u00a0rummage through\u00a0my box of puppets.” Happily, The Moth changed all that, and storytelling is everywhere, as it should be. All we are as humans\u00a0are our stories (our experiences) and our connections to other people, so when\u00a0someone knows how to shape a story arc and make us laugh and see through their eyes and feel through their heart, something magical happens.
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\nEarlier in October, I visited one of my favorite performance venues for storytelling, Northampton’s Academy of Music<\/a>,\u00a0for the year’s final story slam\u00a0put on by\u00a0New England Public Radio’s Valley Voices<\/a>. Two of my friends were telling that night, and there were several\u00a0performers\u00a0I’d never heard before. One of them was Teal van Dyck<\/a>, who talked about their experience as\u00a0a “gender-abundant” person (my favorite new term!), someone who embodies both male and female qualities. Teal, for example, has flowing, beautiful long hair, a curvy chest, and a beard.\u00a0As you\u00a0might imagine, this sparks a lot of questions from curious children. Teal\u00a0spoke about many encounters in grocery stores,\u00a0where direct, honest questions from kids\u00a0are often\u00a0abruptly and dishearteningly shut down by their embarrassed parents, who don’t know how to handle the situation.
\nNavigating gender terminology and etiquette has never been more complicated, but it is wonderful that (a) the internet exists so that we can all educate ourselves and that (b) people like Teal are willing to share their experiences, vocabulary, and heart with audiences who are just catching up with the nuances of language and our limited definitions. Teal’s story is not mine to tell, but I hope they won’t mind my sharing my favorite moment\u00a0of the story. (Note: from here on out, I’m paraphrasing, so please go hear Teal’s story<\/a> yourselves for the real thing. Update: it turns out that the audio for October’s show didn’t come out, so the link leads to a different\u00a0version of this story;\u00a0Teal is the third storyteller.)\u00a0One night, exhausted after a particularly upsetting encounter at the grocery store, where a parent handled his children’s inquisitiveness with a rough hand, Teal spoke with a friend on the phone. The friend said, “I’m so glad you called, because I wanted to tell you that you’re in our book.” The book, they explained, is filled with magical creatures as well as people who are “both-in-one” people, like Teal. They created the book for their child, who is a “both-in-one” kind of kid. My throat got lumpy from the deep sweetness of that loving and creative family project.\u00a0So beautiful.
\nAfter the storytelling evening, I was delighted by the\u00a0joyful\u00a0terms, “gender-abundant” and “both-in-one,”\u00a0and immediately wanted to\u00a0have a book like Teal’s friends’ book, to share at the store with customers and to give to the children in my life. But it only exists in their household so far. (Maybe they would be willing to share it with a larger audience?)\u00a0In the meantime, books like the glorious\u00a0Juli\u00e1n Is a Mermaid<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(which I adore and have blogged about<\/a> before) will help move us closer toward a world where both-in-one thinking is celebrated.
\nCan you all think of\u00a0more gender-abundant children’s books?
\nP.S. For those of you who might think of adult storytelling as a slow train through boredom, here’s a pretty piece CBS Sunday Morning did featuring Sue (and several others) and storytelling in VT: