Tuesday, Apr. 25, 2023
Did a Wisconsin elementary school use a book in its curriculum that depicts children in non-traditional gender roles?
Sugar Creek Elementary, a public school in the Madison, Wisconsin, suburb of Verona, used the book “A House for Everyone.”
It was part of a bullying prevention unit, school district spokesperson Marcie Pfeifer-Soderbloom told Wisconsin Watch on April 21, 2023.
The 2018 book “challenges gender stereotypes and shows 4- to 8-year-olds that it is OK to be yourself,” its publisher says.
Some excerpts:
“Ivy is a girl …. She never, ever chooses to wear a dress.”
“Alex does not feel like just a boy or just a girl. They feel very uncomfortable being called he or she.”
“Tom is a boy. When he was born, everyone thought he was a girl. They gave him a girl’s name. This made Tom sad. When he grew up, he told everyone he was a boy. Now everyone calls him he and Tom. This makes Tom really happy.”
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- Google Docs Verona School District email reply 042123
- Jessica Kingsley Publishers A House for Everyone
- YouTube A House for Everyone (video reading)
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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