My Rainbow

4.5

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Author(s)

Co-Authors / Illustrators

Art Twink

Publisher

Kokila Books

Genre(s)

Age Range

Release Date

October 20, 2020

ISBN

978-1984814609

Buy This Book

A dedicated mom puts love into action as she creates the perfect rainbow-colored wig for her transgender daughter, based on the real-life experience of mother-daughter advocate duo Trinity and DeShanna Neal.

Warm morning sunlight and love fill the Neal home. And on one quiet day, playtime leads to an important realization:Trinity wants long hair like her dolls. She needs it to express who she truly is.

So her family decides to take a trip to the beauty supply store, but none of the wigs is the perfect fit. Determined, Mom leaves with bundles of hair in hand, ready to craft a wig as colorful and vibrant as her daughter is.

With powerful text by Trinity and DeShanna Neal and radiant art by Art Twink, My Rainbow is a celebration of showing up as our full selves with the people who have seen us fully all along.

Editor review

1 review

Intersectional Picture Book about Gender Identity

July 11, 2022

Overall rating

4.5

Plot

4.0

Characters

5.0

Writing Style

4.0

Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)

5.0

Trinity is a child with autism who takes comfort from things like stroking the hair of the family's pig, listening to cello music and playing with Hyperion and Little Thane. When she realizes that her doll has long hair but she does not, she complains to her mother that she can't be a girl. Her mother is surprised, since she has short hair herself, but Trinity is a trangender girl and says it's different for her, and she needs long hair, even though it can irritate her. Lucien decides that maybe a wig would help, so he and the mother visit a wig shop. Nothing is quite right, but they do get some ideas. They buy supplies, and the mother creates a rainbow wig that doesn't irritate Trinity but looks the way she wants it to look.

Good Points

Trinity and her Black family are shown in vivid colors in Art Twink's exuberant illustrations. The faces, even on the pet pig, are very expressive. There are plenty of details in the pictures that support the story, like a "they/them" nametag on a store clerk and different Black hairstyles. Of course, Trinity's wig is a work of art, even if it doesn't look quite like the beautiful floral one on the cover.

Had you tried to find an intersectional book like this even five years ago, you would have been disappointed. We are seeing more books with different cultural perspectives written and illustrated by people with connections to those cultures. While I was hoping for more details about Trinity's strategies for dealing with her Autism Spectrum disorder (because of the first page with her petting the pig), this book was more about her self-identity.

I expect that we will see more titles like this in the future, and there are a few about transgender children from a small variety of cultural backgrounds out alreadt, such as Love's Julian is a Mermaid and Love Makes a Family, Herthel's I am Jazz, and Ford's Calvin.