This book introduces children to 26 different gender identities. Using pictures and clear and simple language. It also comes with a very handy adult guide explaining how to use the book and how to broach the subject of gender identity.

This book is a great resource for introducing the concept of gender and gender identity to young children, I choose to read through only a few pages at once and then have break out discussions with my small person.
I highly recommend this book. It's a great place to start teaching and use it as a tool from which to talk about gender identity.

My small person loved the fun colourful illustrations and simple explanations.

I wish this book was out when I was a child it could have really helped me. I am very glad this book exists.

First, I want to start off with a disclaimer that my low rating is not due to lack of support of the LGBTQ+ community, but rather it is a reflection on my thoughts on this book. I support the community, and chose to read this book in hopes of helping to better educate myself and to help me become a better ally.

That being said.. I can tell the author's heart is in the right place. The book is inclusive to a lot of different gender identities. Some I had heard of, and others I had not, so it goes to show I still have a lot to learn.

I think where the book goes wrong is that, while yes it is targeted towards kids and is written on a reading level they can comprehend, it fails to truly explain the different gender identities. Now I wasn't expecting something overly complex, but I think providing only one sentence makes it feel more like a glossary. In order to make it more educational, I think more explanation would have been nice... maybe providing an example, especially when a few of the identities were quite similar.

I really appreciate the concept of this book and the intentions behind it, so I was immediately interested in reading it. "ABC of Gender Identity" was created as a simple educational resource and conversation starter about gender identity for young children, promoting greater understanding and respect for different identities.

Unfortunately, this book didn't quite live up to my expectations, and I didn't feel able to rate it higher than 3 stars.

While there were words given for all 26 letters of the English alphabet, some of them are outdated (e.g. 'female to male' and 'male to female' are labels not commonly used in the trans community anymore) so I'm not sure that they were the best to include. Other words were about sex rather than gender (e.g. intersex), and some were pronouns rather than identities; I don't think this would be an issue, except these terms are not defined for children at the start of the book (there are some definitions in a guide for adults at the end). This relies heavily on adults being able to clearly and accurately explain these concepts and could lead to more confusion than necessary.

I would also like to note that while the description of this book says that it has "a diverse cast of illustrated characters", there are only 3 skin tones (all shown on the cover) and no visibly disabled characters. Some accessories (e.g. ear piercings) were includded but otherwise all characters were wearing identical clothing, without any cultural/religous identifiers e.g. headscarves. While I understand the author may have been trying to keep as many features the same as possible to avoid associations between identity and presentation, I think that quite a few children will not be able to relate to these illustrations and I would hesitate to call them diverse.

Overall, I hope that Hachette and other publishers will continue to publish and promote diverse childrens' books with content similar to this one, but feel that as it is, "ABC of Gender Identity" is of limited educational value.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me access to an eARC of this book through NetGalley in order to write this review!

This book is such a great way to teach children about gender diversity in small chunks, and it isn't overwhelming at all. The letter style of learning will help children comprehend and remember new information!

When I saw the title of this book, my eyes went big and I was all excited to see how the gender ABC was translated in a way for children to help their understanding. Unfortunately, though - I soon realised that while the core idea is a good one, this book is not really for little children.

In a way, I found the child-friendly illustrations did not match the definitions. The definitions are interesting to read for adults & I admit to have learned a lot from reading this book, but it is not meant for children.

I want to be honest here - but still, feel that it helped me (an adult reader) understand the various gender-related terms in a better way. That's why I went for a three star rating.

This book is such a good idea! I love that it’s introducing the concept of different genders and terminology to children so they will have an easier time accepting others and themselves as they grow into their own gender identities and expressions. As the wife of a non-binary person, this book really grabbed my attention, though my child is a bit too young for this book (I can’t see any productive discussion on this topic with a 2 year old no matter how verbal they are!)
One day I will be able to use this book as a starting point for discussion with my child though, as that is what this book is - a starting point.
There is a small description of each term and a few paragraphs explaining the basics of gender identity and how to discuss it with others, but there is no detail so to fully grasp the concepts, many people will need to do additional research. The book suggests this, but I feel that it would be better if the book offered some suggested reading in its appendix other than “search online”.
It is a beautifully designed book full of colour and bold chunky character illustrations showing various gender presentations from diverse ethnicities.

Personally there were several terms here that I hadn’t heard before and so I will be looking into these a bit more to educate myself - I just wish there was a little help in doing so from the author!
Overall this is a great introduction that is simple, bright and ideal to start the conversations to develop inclusive and accepting children.

When I saw this title I immediately wanted to read this book. A conversation starter to talk about gender identity with children, sounds great! But after reading it, I'm really disappointed. There are quite a lot of terms that I never heard before, so I learned something new, but all in all this glossary just seems more like the result of some challenge to find a term of gender identity for each letter of the alphabet. So you start searching everywhere until you find something that starts with the letter W, ending up with Witchgender. So at times kind of forced and random. One is even just a Chinese term, that felt a bit out of place.
Personally, I didn't like the illustrations, they looked too simple for my taste and didn't give the book much character. I honestly also expected more content. Each page has the name of one gender identity starting with the respective letter and one sentence of explanation. I had hoped for a more thorough description of each term, especially if it is meant to help the adults talking about and explaing the content to children.
The idea is cute, but the realisation of it isn't very good. I guess it is a starter, if you really don't have any other material to help you. But I still think there are better ways of addressing the topic of gender diversity with children than this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Publishers for a free ARC in exchange for a honest review.

Disclaimer: I'm 21 years old with no kids.

Yet this book had some terms I hadn't even heard of before. Like the Guide for Adults at the end of the book states, this is a discussion-oriented book that needs the adult to bring prior knowledge of these terms to the conversation. I don't see it being entirely useful to a child without the discussion aspect but it's curated with simple definitions for the child to understand with minimal assistance from the adult.

This book is great for preschoolers or kindergarteners. This enables educators or parents to start the conversation early & provide early exposure. Love it!

This is a really cute book for people that want to raise queer informed children. The parents guide in the back is perfect and very helpful as to how to approach the topic with one's children I love the mix of common and uncommon identities in a way that lends no judgement.

I think this would be a great resource to have on hand for specific students. I say that because as a preschool teacher, there is such a wide spectrum of understanding and comprehension surrounding so many issues, including but not limited to the various genders. Some students and families may have more varied experiences, understandings and comfort with introducing various concepts. The pictures are simple and bright and would appear to appeal more to the youngest learners while I feel the explanations of the vocabulary are a little more advanced and maybe a bit mismatched with the visuals. I love the colors and clean lines, and learned some new vocabulary myself. I appreciate the information targeted to adults/families at the end of the book that offers suggestions as to how to introduce these topics in age appropriate discussions. As a teacher - and a parent, too - it can often be difficult to know where to begin with things we have less understanding of, and it is always great to have a resource to recommend to people. This would be great to add to a home bookshelf as well.

Full disclosure: I don’t have any kids. I’m an adult who’s conscious that they don’t know much about different gender identities and wants to know more. That’s why this cute, brightly-coloured book appealed.

It’s filled with some terms you know, but quite a few that you’ve probably never heard of before. For example, as well as lots of others, “Kynigender” and “Horogender” were new to me. The first means, “someone who is unable to pinpoint their gender due to the stress of the questioning process.” And the second means “someone whose gender identity changes over time.”

The 26 different gender identities do an excellent job of making you realise just how narrow and unrepresentative the gender binary is. And there’s a helpful reminder at the back, for adults, of the differences between gender, sex and gender identity. There are also suggestions about how to use the book to open up discussions with children, but not sure how well they’d work in practice.

The A to Z of Gender Identity is a timely and helpful primer. Its only drawback is because the language in this area is evolving so quickly, it can only ever represent a snapshot of a particular point in time.

This was a surprisingly informative to be so short and an alphabet book. I am an adult and learned some terms and definitions that I had never heard. Even though it’s a children's book, I think it’s a good book for anyone who is wanting to understand more about gender identity. It’s simplistic but that is the beauty!

Title - ABC Of Gender Identity

Author - Devika Dalal

Theme/Topic - Gender Identities

Age - 5+

Published - June 21st, 2021

Pages - 58

Summary - This book gives a run down from A-Z of Gender Identities and what they mean. Giving 26 Gender Identities and their meanings. Gender Identity is a huge part of who we are and this book is aimed at giving children the information they need to explore who they are.
This book includes simple explanations, a helpful guide for parents, and is a great way of exploring diversity, acceptance, and equality that this world needs so much.

What I Liked About This Book - I liked how it was simple, straight to the point, and very informative. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community myself, I believe knowledge is our most powerful weapon when teaching acceptance and equality. This book really helps to achieve that. In fact, I learned a few things myself as there were a couple of gender identities I myself hadn't heard of.
I also liked the fact there was a helpful guide for parents, coming from a family who was not accepting of LGBTQIA+ this helpful guide I hope will help other parents understand how they can be supportive and knowledgeable should the need arise.

Rating - 5*

Reviewed by LucyLui

I very much liked this book!
The thing I liked the most about this book is that it did not give so much technical talk. It was just as a child would understand.
I am genderqueer myself, but even I learned new words that describe me somewhat better! The graphics were also so cute!

Honestly I expected more from this book. It's basically just a glossary with not very good definitions. I'm part of the LGBT+ Community myself and while I didn't know some of these identities, the book just didn't do a good job of explaining what the identities actually meant. I feel like it would just confuse kids more than actually help them understand. It would be better almost to just talk to your kids and research with them rather than reading this book to them.
The art style in the book was simple but I didn't really like it. I think they could've done a bit more with it honestly. As for the definitions, I understand it's meant for children but give better explanations than a one sentence description. And to me using the alphabet like this just didn't work in the author's favour, it did seem like some of the identities were there just to fill a letter that didn't have a more well-known identity to fit. I feel that if it wasn't in the format of the alphabet you could have included these same identities as well as others and given better descriptions and examples even of each identity and made it easier for children to understand.
What I've noticed with some kids is that a definition only doesn't help them to understand something, but if you were to explain in depth a little more or even have a character for each identity, and have them explain what it meant to them, it would get the kids more interested and help them to understand it better.

All in all, thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this book because I myself have always wondered what some of the gender/sexual identity terms were. So to put it in an ABC format was actually perfect!
Will be purchasing for my kids and my friends kids!

I'm grateful to Jessica Kingsley Publishers and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Expected date of release is June 21, 2021.

This book provides very short definitions of 26 gender-related terms in alphabetical order, and then includes an epilogue to provide guidance to parents in talking to their children about gender identity.

I love that this book exists - I want to make that very clear. Terminology around sexuality and gender identity has exploded in the last few decades. I'm non-binary, and even as an insider, I wouldn't say I know all the terms.

That said, I don't know how useful this book actually is. The definitions provided for the terms are really too short to do much good, and some of the definitions are incomprehensible (libragender, I'm looking at you). The idea of presenting them as an alphabet is cute, but it results in an uneven text. Some words that should have been included, being much more common, are missing, and some words are included only because they suited the letter the author needed to fill in, rather than being a truly necessary piece of queer-trans culture.

Someone who's already part of the community probably doesn't need this book to talk about gender with their kids. Someone who's external to the community will need a lot of supporting texts and internet research to go along with this book in order to talk to their kids. Maybe this would work for someone sort of adjacent to the community? If the definitions were only a bit longer and included examples, it would be a much more useful text.

The artwork in this book is simple, but still very cute and easy on the eyes! The terms and descriptions are easy to understand and would be even easier to explain to a child, and even helped me understand what some of them mean as a non-binary person. I think this would be one of the best accompaniments to any person trying to educate a child on gender and gender identities, while not having the source material be confusing or overwhelming for any parties involved!

This is a fantastic book with which to introduce the concept of gender identity with a child. The ABC of Gender Identity explores 26 gender identities (all associated with a letter of the alphabet) and approaches this topic in a relatable and caring manner. The Guide for Adults at the end is a thorough and thoughtful resource.