Flamingo Rampant Book Club! subtitled

One of my favorite things about being a parent

is the opportunity to help populate my child's imagination.

I know that everything I choose for him to read, listen to or look at shapes the lens through which he'll see

the whole rest of the world, for the rest of his life.

And also, one of the most fearsome responsibilities to me, in being a parent

is the one of helping to populate my child's imagination

knowing that the choices I make now will have a pretty significant impact on how he see

the whole rest of the world, for the rest of his life.

I'm Bear Bergman. I'm an author, an educator; I've written six books - four for grownuops

and two for kids. I also own a tiny, little, this big,

so small! kids book press called Flamingo Rampant.

I'm really excited today to introduce to you Flamingo Rampant's new project

the Flamingo Rampant Book Club!

This is a subscription service, that will last a year.

Every other month, your school or your house or your library or your organization

will receive another lesbian or gay or bi or trans or gender-independent themed

picture book, delivered straight to you.

Probably in a pink envelope, and almost certianly with some glitter in there.

One of the primary things that we're concerned with at Flamingo Rampant

is celebration and joy.

A lot of the current picture books that are for our families

- that have lesbian moms or gay dads or gender-independent kids

or queer people of any kind are stories that focus on bullying.

They're stories that focus on "Oh, something was very difficult!" and most of the story

is about a young person or a family dealing with things that are hard for them.

That's fine. But what we're about at Flamingo Rampant is showing things that are great

about our families. Showing things that are great about the families we know,

and showing things that are great about all kinds of other families in the world.

We've got six fantatsic authors lined up, and amazing illustrators

we've got books that span a trip across the world, and books that happen

all in the same apartment building. We have boy protagonists and girl protagonists and

gender-independent protagonists.

We have lesbian moms and gay dads and multigenerational families.

We have the ABCs of Pride, where glitter takes a place right alongside revolution

just as, at Flamingo Rampant, we believe it should.

There's a whole variety of ways to join the project, ranging from a dollar donation

gets you colouring pages that you can work on at home. All the way down to

the opportunity to get a subscription for yourself, for your self and a friend,

for yourself and your local library, or yourself and your kids' school,

and the last options are you get a subscription and original artwork!

Or you get a subscription, and original artwork, and I call your house

and sing an original song about how fabulous you are. Which will probably be short

but by G-d it will be heartfelt.

I'm really excited about the opportunity to share new kinds of stories with all sorts of families.

I'm really excited for an opportunity to provide what - for a very long time -

feminist and independent and LGBTQ bookstores provided: a curated choice of books

that represent really positive values about our community.

Now we mostly have Barnes & Noble, and now we mostly have gigantic press conglomerates.

Here at Flamingo Ramnpant we're trying to do something different.

We're an organization run by queers and trans people, we're making stuff that's

about queers and trans people, and we're making it for all kinds of families. Right?

There are stories. So if yours is not an LGBTQ2S family? That's okay!

The stories will be interesting enough for your children, or the kids in your class,

or the kids in your school. There will be plenty of interesting stuff to take care of them.

And as you can see, I under stand how it's important-

Papa!

-for things to be - look at that! We're doing this now.

You made me drop something.

Okay. That's probably all I have time for, 'cause it's dinnertime and I think you know how that goes.

Papa, you made me drop something!

Well, can you say -

You made me drop the other one of these

- goodbye to the internet, because that's what we're -

Goodbye, internet.

[laughs] Thanks for listening, I really hope you'll join the project.

From our house to yours, [kiss noise], thanks so much.