Pride Month is the perfect time to pick up a good book and learn from someone else’s perspective. Check out these book recommendations for your age group.

Children

Julian Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
This gorgeous Stonewall Award-winning picture book stars Julián, a child coming to understand their gender nonconformity after a joyful encounter with three women dressed as shimmering mermaids. Julián fantasizes about dressing up like a mermaid too, and wonders what his Abuela will make of it in this celebration of self-love and individuality.

I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
With clarity and insight, Jazz Jennings shares her story of realizing at a very young age that, though she was being raised as a boy, she was truly a girl. An essential read for children and families of all experiences, I Am Jazz has an empowering message of celebrating what makes us unique and respecting everyone’s differences.

Tweens

The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy
The Fletchers are no different from any modern American family — four brothers, various pets (some possibly imaginary), soccer, plays, and pesky neighbors. The fact that the fathers are gay and a few of the brothers are adopted? That’s just background, showing readers without telling them that there as many definitions of family as there are families.

Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker
Zenobia July is a hacking and coding prodigy who’s attending a new school as a girl for the first time. Though she’s recently lost her family of origin, she creates a chosen family in the LGBTQ+ community. Bunker’s also the author of Felix Yz, an imaginative story with several characters who are queer and gender fluid.

Teens

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
Marin left her old life in California for college in New York without a word to anyone who knew her. Then a visit from Mabel, her former best friend and maybe-something-more, forces Marin to confront the sad and painful memories that led to her leaving everything behind.

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Darius, a lonely half-Persian boy with an affinity for Star Trek, travels to Iran to meet his mother’s family for the first time. There, he falls in love: with the city of Yazd, his grandparents, and his new friend, Sohrab.

Adults

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are.

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
A love story for the ages, the novel is set in 1988 on the Italian Riviera. Narrated by 17-year-old Elio, it tells the story of his summer tryst with Oliver, a 24-year-old American student who stays with Elio’s family while researching his manuscript. The novel is the source of the Oscar-winning best adapted screenplay, and the film is as deeply moving as the book.