’Twas the Night Before Pride

Packing snacks, making signs, and sharing queer history with their newest addition, an interracial queer family prepares for Pride in this celebratory picture book. Via largely scanning rhymes that echo Clement C. Moore’s holiday classic, an older child narrator and their two moms explain the upcoming outing to baby Sammy. Along the way, McClintick’s lines connect the family’s pride to the work of activists, artists, and everyday people who have fought “to know that we matter/ to show all we exist”: “So Pride’s not just about tutus and rainbow suspenders./ It’s about rights for queers and all our beautiful genders.” Medina’s rainbow-hued illustrations give Pride scale and scope, mingling images of protests with awe-inspiring parade views from above, the spreads brimming with people of arrayed abilities, gender expressions, and skin tones carrying a range of Pride flags in this warm and moving tale. End papers feature queer icons. Ages 4–8. (May)