Books like I Like to Be Little
By Charlotte Zolotow
For the kid who's always being told to hurry up and grow — this one lets her explain, in her own words, why little is good. quiet, conversational, tender
A young transgender girl shares what it's like to have a girl's brain in a boy's body, from loving pink and mermaid costumes to helping her family understand who she really is.
After spotting three dazzling mermaids on the subway, a boy transforms his home into a lagoon of imagination, fashioning his own mermaid costume from a curtain and some ferns.
When a crocodile egg rolls into her nest, Mother Duck simply hatches it with the rest and raises the little crocodile as one of her own ducklings.
A Pakistani-American girl is chosen as flower girl for her Auntie Laila's wedding, where her Auntie Amina paints intricate henna designs on her hands — but Nadia worries what her classmates will think on Monday.
A girl with six names asks her father why she was given so many — and learns each one carries the story of a grandparent who came before her.
A celebration told through many young voices, each one honoring the beauty of their own brown skin and finding themselves reflected in the natural world around them.
A Puerto Rican girl grows up surrounded by love and pride in her Taíno and African heritage, but painful treatment from the world slowly dims her sense of her own beauty — until her community rallies to wake her up again.
An introduction to gender identity for young readers, explaining that some people are boys, some are girls, and some are both, neither, or somewhere in between.
A girl in Hawaiʻi who feels neither wahine nor kane sets her sights on leading her school's boys-only hula troupe in a traditional kane chant.
A little bird named Choco longs for a mother and searches among all kinds of animals, none of whom look like him, before finding one in a warm, unexpected shape.
An extra-long dachshund named Pretzel wins every dog show with ease, but Greta, the dachshund across the street, isn't impressed by long dogs — until his unusual length turns out to be exactly what saves the day.
