The list below is an addendum to the “Queer Parenting 101” session facilitated by Philly Family Pride at the Creating Change 2018 Conference in Washington, DC. For suggestions, please comment below or email Stephanie Haynes at [email protected].
Click this link to download a PDF of the transcribed questions/discussion topics from the session:
Queer Parenting 101 Butcher Block Post-It Note Questions
PERSONAL STORIES
18 Lesbian Moms We Love on Instagram
A Womb of Their Own
Biff and Trystan
Building Blocks – Interactive Conversations with LGBTQ families
Dad, Daddy & Kids
Darrow Brown and Juan Calvo – Story Corps
The F-Word: A Foster-to-Adopt Story
Family Focus: Jem, Michael and Tia
Fostering Hopes
Gay Parent Magazine
Gayby Maybe Epic Queer Parenting Round Table
Gays with Kids
Julie Chu and Caroline Ouellette welcome baby to family
Kordale & Kaleb
Love Comes First YouTube Channel
My Coming-Out Story: Out and Proud as a Bisexual Mother
New Film Shows Lesbian Families’ Struggles and Resilience in the South
Sandy & Denise
This Amazing Trans Couple Defied The Odds—And Their Doctor—To Conceive A Child
Tess and Nikina’s Story
BOOKS
9 New LGBT Children’s Books Every Kid Should Read Jan. 2018
A Holiday Guide to 2017’s LGBTQ Family Books
Yes, There Are Queer-Positive Children’s Books That Are Actually Good and Not Horribly Depressing
Corey Silverberg’s Books
Flamingo Rampant
The Book Nook – Family Equality Council
FINDING YOUR PEOPLE
Camp Highlight
COLAGE
Family Equality Council
Gay Parent Magazine List of Support Groups
Gay Fathers Facebook Group
Queer Mamas* Facebook Group
Transgender Parenting Facebook Group
FINANCIAL HELP
Financial Assistance for LGBT Parents to Be
The Ultimate Gay Men’s Guide to Crowdfunding for Surrogacy or Adoption
LEGAL RESOURCES
ACLU – LGBT Parenting
Legal Recognition of LGBT Families  – National Center for Lesbian Rights
State LGBT Family Law Guides – National Center for Lesbian Rights
Families – National Center for Transgender Equality
Protecting Your Children – Lambda Legal
Know Your Rights – Transgender Parenting 
OTHER RESOURCES
How Can Midwives Help Queer and Trans Families Feel Safe?
What Do Kids Call Their LGBTQ Parents?
Welcoming Schools

While learning about the history of black and brown people shouldn’t just be relegated to one month a year, PFP wanted to take this opportunity to offer some book lists, an upcoming event and a couple of new books for Black History Month.
First, be sure to check out The 25th Annual African-American Children’s Book Fair this Saturday, February 4th at the Community College of Philadelphia from 1-4pm. The fair is one of the oldest and largest single-day events for African American children’s books in the country. On average, over 3,500 people from across the nation attend.Now for some relevant book lists:
Brown Sugar & Spice Books Elementary School Collection
Free Library of Philadelphia: Black Lives Matter, Elementary School
Free Library of Philadelphia: Martin Luther King, Books for Children
GoodReads Civil Rights Books for Children
GoodReads Picture Books for Black History Month
See below for a couple of books that are new. If you have other favorites, please join our Facebook group and make your suggestions to this list on there.
March by John Lewis
March, a graphic novel trilogy, is a vivid first-hand account of Georgia Congressman John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis’ personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.
The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist, by Cynthia Levinson
Audrey was just 9 years old in 1963, during the civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., but that didn’t stop her from standing up and speaking out against racial segregation. Learn how her confidence and bravery made a difference.
Finally, if you plan to purchase these books, please consider doing so locally at bookstores such as Bindlestiff or Big Blue Marble. If you order on Amazon, please select Philadelphia Family Pride as your Amazon Smile organization. Thank you!

The following list was compiled by PFP board member and Free Library of Philadelphia employee Joel Nichols.
Let us know in the comments if there are other books you’d put on this list!
In addition to Amazon, please check your local bookstore such as Bindlestiff Books in West Philly, Big Blue Marble Book Store in Mt. Airy or Philly AIDS Thrift at Giovanni’s Room in Center City.
Story of Ferdinand:  Leaf, Munro 1936
Little Blue and Little Yellow:  Lionni, Leo 1962
Where the Wild Things Are:  Sendak, Maurice 1963
A Color of His Own:  Lionni, Leo 1975
The Paper Bag Princess:  Munsch, Robert 1980
Tacky the Penguin:  Lester, Helen 1990
Ella Sarah Gets Dressed:  Chodos-Irvine, Margaret 2003
The Family Book:  Todd Parr 2003
The Sissy Duckling: Fierstein, Harvey 2005
Rosie Revere Engineer: Beaty, Andrea 2005
10,000 Dresses:  Ewert, Marcus 2008 (Some disagreement on our board over this book. What do you think?)
My Princess Boy:  Kilodavis, Cheryl 2009
Cinnamon Baby:  Winstanley, Nicola 2011
Mr. Tiger Goes Wild:  Brown, Peter 2013
Wild:  Hughes, Emily 2013
Not every princess:  Bone, Jeffrey and Lisa 2014
This Day in June:  Pitman, Gayle E. 2014
Jacob’s New Dress:  Hoffman, Ian and Sarah 2014
Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress: Baldacchino, Christine 2014
Happy in Our Skin:  Manushkin, Fran 2015
Red: a Crayon’s Story:  Hall, Michael 2015
Worm Loves Worm: Austrian, J.J. 2016

by Sandra Telep

I don’t remember how I found out about Cory’s book, but I do remember when because it was the day before the Kickstarter campaign ended. I was one of the last contributors — one of the last lucky bunch to be able to be a financial part of the publishing of this book, to get an advance copy, to receive updates on its progress in my inbox. It must have been a Facebook link to the campaign; that seems to be the only way I hear about anything these days.

The details, though, are kind of irrelevant because, thankfully, this sort of abstract idea of a maybe-book became — quite suddenly, it seemed — a tangible purple, amazing thing in our hands. On our bookshelf, even.

I remember when my son was born, one of the gifts we received was a boxed set of old-school Little Golden Books (the disturbingly outdated/sexist/ableist/sizeist Good Humor Man among them, but that’s another post entirely.) And tucked into the box was a completely blank Little Golden Book. White cover and all white pages. A create-your-own! I slid the create-your-own out of the box and put it in a special place at the top of the closet, vowing to write a book for my child that would represent our family and how it came to be: a butch mom, a femme mom, a kid conceived through donor insemination — all living out our homosexual agenda peacefully with our cats. As it should be. I thought, I am a writer! This is perfect! I could have written a book at any time, of course. Sites like cafepress make it easy to self-publish and even a good ole stack of paper and a stapler would have been enough, but somehow the idea of a pre-fab book, just waiting for my story made it that much more appealing.
Potential.
Fast forward four years and parenting/teaching/living all took a spot in the line ahead of writing a book and that all-white Little Golden is still in the top of my son’s closet, now floating around amongst the outgrown clothes, the yet-to-grow-into clothes, the accumulation of stuffed animals, and the stacks of drawings and scribbles that I am determined to save forever. We have collected many books over the course of the last several years and several of them have been about two-mom families or ways that babies come to be. I am, fortunately, quite good at changing stories as I read them, so I’ve been able to adapt what we have to fit our family for the most part either by skipping pages or making something up, but I have always wondered what would happen when my son learned to read and could see that I was changing words and skipping around.
Enter: What Makes a Baby. This book, I swear to you, has changed my life. Dramatic? A little. But also true.
What Cory does (and I am such a fangirl that I feel comfortable just using his first name here) is tell a story without actually telling it. He gives parents a framework within which we can create and tell our own stories — and he does it so seamlessly and gracefully that we almost don’t know it’s happening. I read the book to my then-3-year-old son and he started asking questions about whether he had a uterus or not and whether his mommy (not me) gave us the sperm we used to make him. Which opened the door for us to explain, in age-appropriate terms, where he came from. How he was made. Lines such as “Not all bodies have sperm in them. Some do and some do not,” gave us the opportunity to explain that while we needed sperm to make him, we didn’t happen to have it ourselves.
Not all bodies have eggs in them. Some do and some do not.
The page that says, “Whichever way the baby comes out, it’s a pretty big deal for the baby. It’s also a pretty big deal for the people who waited and waited and WAITED for the baby to be born,”  allowed us to explain the way in which he was delivered, while also allowing room for us to explain the way his cousins, for example, were delivered. That’s what makes What Makes a Baby so unique. And so treasured. And so needed. Among a field of books that talk about “when two adults love each other very much…” or “when you were in your mommy’s tummy…” or “when your mommy and daddy…” there comes this book that respects and honors and creates space for all families and all experiences.
Our family needed this book. Your family needs this book. In fact, I can’t think of a family that doesn’t need this book. Luckily (and at long last) we can all have it.
Cory Silverberg is the keynote speaker at PFP’s Family Matters Conference, which will be held at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia on October 19, 2013. You can meet Cory, buy the book, get it signed, and live happily ever after. Register here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2013familymattersconference