Artist Statement
This project, “The ABCs of LGBT+”, primarily aims to create a book that can give children and families a strong, positive and affirming foundation in their understanding and familiarity with the LGBT+ community and experience, as well as provide much needed representation of it in the world of children’s media. It also hopes to explain and define several key relevant terms and concepts in a way that children and their families can understand, featuring handmade illustrations that give children a visual aid to represent each idea. Whether they are children who may one day come to understand their own queerness in time, are the children of queer couples themselves, or even if they don’t grow up to be queer themselves or whose families are not queer can benefit tremendously from engaging with this project and learning from it. There is no downside to giving children and their families a broader, more positive, and informed understanding of who queer people are and what the LGBT+ experience is about.
All of this stems from a place rooted in my own lack of exposure and representation of the queer experience I should have had available to me as I grew up. I desperately needed it then, and it’s plain to see the demand for the same in modern children and family media today. This is my way of responding to that need now. My hopes, after this project is finished, are that I can actually find a publisher who can get this book available both online as a digital copy, and as hardcover books available in stores for families of all kinds to obtain and share with their children. The same children who, I also hope, share this with their children, or their friends and their families, in due time.
