Like That Eleanor

In Wind’s illustrated children’s book, a young girl named Eleanor draws on stories of her namesake, Eleanor Roosevelt, when she wants to be an ally to a nonbinary classmate.

At Eleanor’s school, girls and boys don’t play together at recess, and each group makes a point to exclude the other. Seeing that her nonbinary classmate, Star, is struggling with this situation, Eleanor thinks: “sometimes things are so unfair, I don’t know how to help.” When she asks her dads for help, they share anecdotes about first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and she wonders how she can be more like her. Star is visibly upset when Ms. Galton asks the boys and girls to divide themselves up the next day, but Eleanor remembers how her namesake sat in a folding chair in an aisle in a racially segregated auditorium, rather than choose a side. The youngster grabs her own chair and sits in the middle of the room: “The way my friends and I see it, if all of us are in the middle, then all of us belong.” Mangan’s full-color illustrations are simple but have a genuine sweetness, particularly in portraits of young Eleanor and her dads. The book offers questions for adults to spur discussion, and some are quite thought-provoking: “Share if there’s something you would like to do or try that maybe some people say is not okay because of your gender.” The last pages feature a wonderful graphic on how to be an ally to targets of unfairness, as well as sources for more information about Eleanor Roosevelt. Kids generally understand unfairness when they see it, but they (and many adults) often don’t know what to do in such situations. By pairing young Eleanor’s tale with stories of the activist first lady, youngsters may learn how to draw inspiration from the past to help others. (The illustrations feature a wide variety of skin tones among the students; two wear headscarves, and one wears a hearing aid.)

An ideal guide for readers of any age to learn how to be an ally—“one way each of us can help make our world more fair.”