It Feels Good to Be Yourself

Overview

It Feels Good to Be Yourself is a picture book for very young readers, written by Theresa Thorn and illustrated by Noah Grigni. It approaches gender not as a fixed binary but as a spectrum, walking children through the idea that some people are boys, some are girls, and some are neither or both — using plain, warm language pitched at a preschool or early-elementary audience.

The book leans on repetition and reassurance rather than argument. Its aim is descriptive, not prescriptive: it names a range of experiences a child might have or encounter in a classmate, without insisting on any single narrative of what gender should look like.

Because it is built for the read-aloud age group, the book relies heavily on its illustrations to carry meaning alongside a spare, rhythmic text — a format more often associated with concept books about colors or feelings than with identity.

Context and Reception

The book belongs to a small but growing shelf of picture books written specifically to give young children and the adults reading to them a shared vocabulary for gender diversity before those conversations arise organically. Rather than centering a single character's coming-out story, it functions more like a primer, aimed at normalizing a range of experiences early rather than explaining them after the fact.

This early-childhood framing is central to how the book has been discussed publicly. Supporters position it alongside other books that introduce social-emotional concepts — sharing, empathy, family structures — as simply expanding that same toolkit to include gender. Detractors, by contrast, treat the subject matter itself as inherently unsuited to the format, regardless of how gently it is handled, which has made the book a frequent flashpoint in broader debates over what belongs in early-childhood collections.

Why It Feels Good to Be Yourself Has Been Challenged

Much of the disagreement over this book centers less on any specific passage than on whether its subject is appropriate for the audience it's written for. Because it targets the youngest end of the picture-book range, opponents argue that the concept of gender variance is being introduced before children are developmentally ready for it, and that the choice belongs with parents rather than a library shelf or classroom read-aloud.

The substantive objections raised generally fall into a few categories: discomfort with introducing gender identity as a topic at all in materials for small children, concern that presenting multiple gender experiences as equally ordinary amounts to advocacy rather than description, and broader unease about how schools and libraries handle books that touch on LGBTQ+ themes in early-childhood collections. Defenders counter that the book simply gives children language for identities and family situations some of them are already encountering, and that the calm, factual tone works against, rather than for, any charge of indoctrination.

In this catalog, It Feels Good to Be Yourself has been formally challenged in 5 states and 6 school districts, reflecting how contested early-childhood gender content has become in curriculum and library-collection debates nationally.