Sometimes, it takes a community to build a book. Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth’s What Makes A Baby started as the little Kickstarter project that could, and bloomed into something much larger as both creators were bowled over by the community support they got for a children’s book that looked at reproductive rights in a more inclusive way. Cory was kind enough to answer a few questions about What Makes A Baby for Global Comment as he prepared for the book’s release; the book, picked up by Seven Stories Press, hit shelves on 21 May.
Global Comment: What made you decide to do this project?
Silverberg: It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years. Even as a kid I was very much aware of how the books for kids about reproduction sexuality presented the topic, along with gender, in ways that had more to do with what adults think kids ‘should’ know and were less reflective of how kids experience and understand gender and sexuality. It’s not a question of those books being wrong (although when it comes to gender they often were) but rather that we need more books. I really wanted to try and write books that would work for more of us, especially since I didn’t find myself in many of the books I had growing up.
Global Comment: Kickstarter is a pretty unconventional way to get a book going—how did you make the decision to go that route?
Silverberg: I knew it would be a near impossible sell to a publisher. I wanted complete control and I wanted a book that would be beautiful to hold and read (meaning it would cost more to produce). And I had never published a children’s book before. So I knew from early on that I would have to self-publish.
I’m a bit of a Kickstarter junkie. I love backing projects and have had a few friends successfully fund books using Kickstarter. Still, I was very nervous about it as it calls on you to be the public face asking for help. Like most people I’m not very good at asking for help, and I also happen to be very shy and prefer not to be front and center. But I’m so glad I did it and I recommend the process to anyone thinking about a creative project. Using Kickstarter didn’t change the finished book but it completely changed my relationship to the project and the readers.
Global Comment: Were you surprised (delighted?) by the outpouring of support for the Kickstarter and the project?
Silverberg: Yes, and yes. I really believed I would spend 30 days hustling non-stop to raise the $9,500 I needed. I wasn’t sure I would even make it. But we raised that in less than 24 hours and the interest and support really solidified for me the fact that this shouldn’t just be a one-time project but that the need is great for books that tell different kinds of stories about families, reproduction, gender, and sexuality. It was also my first experience being on the receiving end of something going viral. This was great for the project and came with lots of nice feelings, but for someone who doesn’t love to be the center of attention and finds being on line to be fairly anxiety provoking, it was pretty intense.
Global Comment: What kinds of comments did you get from parents and fellow sex educators about the book?
Silverberg: Lots of people emailed to share their unique story of how they made a baby. Some shared stories about attempts that did not succeed. Because there is a line in the story that is a bit vague but opens up the opportunity to talk about miscarriages I had many people share those experiences with me and thank me for creating a book that could allow a conversation about that with an older child. Same goes for people who had c-section births and home births. To me the representation of those two ways of delivering a baby was obvious, but what is perhaps different and appreciated about What Makes a Baby is that it doesn’t position one kind of birth as the “normal” way and others as the “special” way.
Sex educators seem to like the open ended quality of the writing and it’s already being used in some classrooms, which is exciting. I’m not sure the text works in a group setting but the illustrations are so captivating to young children that it does make for a great introduction to the topic. Most of the educators I know who are using it in groups are mostly using it for the illustrations, which I’m thrilled with.
I was worried about the fact that the book is written in a very different way from other books that tackle the topic. Most books strive to give all the answers. But, for a variety of reasons that are both stylistic and pedagogic, What Makes a Baby does not do this. It gives the basics and then provides a lot of space for parents or adult readers to share as much or as little as they want about the unique circumstances of the child’s birth. I wouldn’t change any of it, but because it’s novel I wasn’t sure if people would be disappointed or confused.
By and large they haven’t been. And I think the Reader’s Guide, which people can download for free, is helping the grown ups find their own way to talk about things they originally may have thought were too difficult to talk about with a young child.
Global Comment: Some of our readers were confused or concerned about the lack of gendering in What Makes A Baby—can you talk about the impetus behind that decision a bit more and why you believe it’s important?
Silverberg: I think it’s important to acknowledge that any shifts in the way we talk about gender can be really challenging for folks, and I understand both the confusion and the concerns. One of the unique things about What Makes a Baby is how we treat gender.
To clarify, the book is not gender neutral. Gender absolutely matters and there’s plenty of gender in this book. In the first part of the book, characters and body parts are not clearly gendered. But in the last part of the book they are. The reason I don’t insert gender as a topic early on is that I don’t think it’s necessary, and I don’t think it would be possible to be realistic and keep the story simple. A book that says there are boys and girls, men and women, and that those words both describe sex and gender is simply not being accurate. These words are used in different ways by different people, but certainly among those who study sex and gender, it has been clear for a long time that neither term is a binary, and that there are good reasons to think about these two concepts as separate but connected.
So it was important to me to at least for the moment, separate sex from gender. In the context of a book for four-year-olds what that means is that we don’t talk about anatomical sex as if it is gender. We don’t say that eggs are female and that only women have eggs. Eggs are a biological marker of a body that medicine assigned as female. But it’s the body that gets called female. And that is a sex assignment. When we say that women’s bodies have eggs, and when we illustrate those eggs to have bows in their hair, to wear high heels, or otherwise to read as feminine, we are confusing gender and sex.
Again, gender IS important, but as a sex educator it’s my job to decide when to introduce information and how it’s introduced. In my opinion most sex education sneaks in messages about gender without acknowledging that they are doing it. The result is that kids are never taught to think critically about gender or sex, they are taught that these are fixed and ‘natural’ truths.
But of course they aren’t. To continue with this example, it’s true that most women’s bodies have eggs in them. But not all women’s bodies have eggs in them. So why do we say they do? Why do we start sex education at the earliest age by limiting children’s options and understanding? It isn’t necessary, and it isn’t even accurate.
So in What Makes a Baby kids learn that some bodies have eggs and some bodies don’t. Some bodies have sperm and some bodies don’t. And parents, educators, and trusted adults are invited to explain further. There’s nothing in my book that would prevent a parent from providing a child with the same story that they would get in any other book. But the way the book is written allows for infinite variations in the stories we tell our children, which means that instead of saying “this is how everyone does it, but this is the strange way we did it” parents get to center their own story, giving their child the message that their family is just as valid and as important as any other family, regardless of how they came to be.
Global Comment: Rumour has it you’ve been signed on a two-book deal, so inquiring minds want to know: what else do you have planned?
What Makes a Baby is the first in a series of three books that are all about sexuality and gender. The next book is for children 7 and up (roughly, since those age ranges are imperfect and imprecise). It will cover a lot more ground including gender, anatomy, touch, reproduction (in more detail), families, and lots of stories about bodies. The third book will be for kids 10 and up and will include some early information about puberty, information about relationships, Internet safety, and even more information about sexual and gender identity.
We’re looking forward to more from Cory Silverberg—as a sex educator, he’s already making waves when it comes to progressive, inclusive, and thought-provoking material on a variety of subjects, and his books are a must-add to any parent’s library.