Pride Puppy! is written by Robin Stevenson, a wonderful human and award-winning author, check out her other books! It’s published by Orca Books, who are so supportive and incredible to work with, I’ve had a lot of fun illustrating several books for them over the years!
PRIDE PUPPY! & SCOTUS
Pride Puppy is involved in an upcoming SCOTUS case. Here are a few links to learn more:
Watch & read about the case, including interviews with Orca publisher, Andrew Wooldridge, on Global News and CHEK News, a helpful fact sheet from GLAAD, a primer from the Advocate, and a great piece at Vox
Read the statement by the authors & illustrators of the books involved at pen.org. You can find the names of their books there as well, or Sarah Brannen, author of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, has a great summary of the titles! PEN also wrote about misrepresentation surrounding the books
Op-ed by Sarah & Ian Hoffman in TIME, op-ed by Sarah Brannen in the Boston Globe, statement by Charlotte Sullivan Wild, Resources for Action links from Andy Passchier, more in-depth analysis at Mombian + a look at the potential ramifications
Articles in the Times Colonist and the Globe & Mail (+)
More reporting at New York Times (+), Washington Post, USA Today x 2
Check out this wonderful Right to Read Activity Packet for kids, including a Pride Puppy! colouring page!
ADDRESSING MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT PRIDE PUPPY!
If you’re unfamiliar with the book, you can read a starred Kirkus Review HERE!
It’s a fun and colourful rhyming alphabet book which has a secondary ‘search & find’ element to it, so there’s something new to find every time! Every page tells the story of a puppy who gets lost at a Pride parade using each letter of the alphabet, and then there’s an assortment of other items starting with that same letter to hunt for on the page. There’s a word list at the end of the book with these items in case you need a hand!
There’s been SO much wonderful feedback on the book!
However, the book has also become a target for an ugly and deliberate campaign of misinformation.
The reporting around it focuses on a handful of words from the supplemental word list, linking them together while providing no context, implying salacious content.
Here are a few of the 287 words in the list: apple, basketball, cat, dinosaur, flag, grapes, happy face, lemonade, map, poodle, roller skates, sunflower, tuba, umbrella, yoyo. You get the idea!
This is a short book, and a quick read would clear up any questions about its content. Unfortunately this is not how the internet outrage machine works!
As the illustrator of the book, I’d like to debunk and clarify some of the misconceptions. I took screenshots directly from conservative websites attacking the book then collaged the “problematic” words on top of the actual artwork. Let’s go!
THE MOST FREQUENTLY QUOTED
Some of the words highlighted say more about what the critics are imagining the words to describe, rather than what is actually shown in the book. They’re making it weird! The words most frequently cited are leather and underwear.
The leather mentioned is a leather jacket, a fairly common article of clothing that even children sometimes wear! What did they think it was? Maybe I don’t want to know. This is the only piece of leather clothing in the entire book, aside from a vaguely western-style vest.
Lip ring is also mentioned, an accessory you might see any given day at say, the grocery store. And it’s very, very small.
L is also for ladybug and lion and lollipop!
SPECIAL UPDATE FROM THE SCOTUS HEARING!
Justice Gorsuch claimed that he has read the book and that it has “leather bondage things,” uh sorry what? He’s either a terrible reader or a liar.
I thought ✨telling the whole truth and nothing but truth✨ was kind of the whole deal in court? Especially the literal highest one in America? No??
Also, listen to Robin’s excellent interview on CBC’s As It Happens, the segment starts at 9:30!
Next up is underwear, a piece of clothing I assume the majority of people of every age wear on a daily basis? There’s even an award-winning kids superhero franchise based on it! The underwear is obviously part of a fun dress-up, not just someone who forgot to wear pants that day. Is no one mad about the unibrow?!
SEE ALSO:
THE OTHERS
Drag queen and drag king. Honestly, if it wasn’t mentioned in the word list I doubt the average reader would even recognize these characters as being in drag. It’s fun to dress up at any age, who cares!
Well they didn’t even get her name right, but Marsha P. Johnson was a trans activist and a prominent figure in the Stonewall Uprising of 1969, which was a catalyst for the first Pride Parade in 1970. So yes, a postage stamp-sized nod to Marsha goes in the book about … a Pride Parade.
M is also for mouse and muffin and moon, N for noodles and newspaper and a net!
There is an intersex flag and it takes up 0.005% of the spread. If you’re concerned about your child hearing about this at school, I will remind you that the word list is a voluntary addition at the back of the book, there are almost 300 other words and I’d take a wild guess that the teacher isn’t going through all of them. If you read this book at home you can decide how or even if you want to discuss this with your child.
Look at that cute Shiba Inu!
THE ABSURD
These ones are completely ridiculous, but it proves that the people criticizing the book CLEARLY HAVE NOT READ IT and are just looking for outrage.
The “green [glitter] beard” was inspired by a [straight] male friend who used to put glitter in his beard to run marathons, it’s a thing that [often straight] men do at sporting events.
You can also see the character is wearing goggles while playing a gold guitar (bonus: it’s a G chord!), there’s a corner of a gazebo with a garland off to the side! If you read the book, the full page also shows a yappy goose, bubble gum, and grandma. See, this is fun!
My all-time favourite comes from the Catholic News Agency - ZIPPER. Zipper! It’s a zipper on a jacket strewn on the bed at the end of the day. It’s not even being worn!
Like, uh, what kind of zipper were they thinking of? Do tell!
A BONUS CLARIFICATION FOR SARAH ISGUR!
On January 23, 2025, Sarah Isgur had a lot of disgusting and uninformed things to say about Pride Puppy! on her podcast with David French, which is about “the law, the courts, their collision with politics, and why it all matters.” They were discussing the upcoming SCOTUS case, Mahmoud vs. Taylor, that involves Pride Puppy! and 8 other kids books.
As we’ve seen, there’s a lot of misinformation about the contents of the book, but Sarah took it a step further and made up a bunch of nonsense that literally doesn’t exist in the book. This is especially appalling, given the directive of the podcast’s parent company, the Dispatch, where Sarah is a senior editor. Let’s hear from Sarah!
Ooook, first of all, clamps?! Huh? There is nothing remotely close to clamps and I have no clue where she would even get the idea... (Every accusation is a confession?) Thanks for inventing new misinformation, doing great work here with the journalistic integrity!
Here’s the C page and I even included the word list, to clear that up.
Sorry, everyone wears leather chaps and lip rings? There isn’t a single pair of chaps anywhere in the book, and there is one (1) lip ring on one out of the 116 individuals illustrated. How would you even know that there are “annoying super stereotyped caricatures” in here, since you obviously haven’t cracked the book? Wow, what an ally! 🙏 There are plenty of regularly dressed people. If you’re going to talk about it like some kind of expert, READ IT.
Speaking of leather, which you seem to take quite an issue with here, surely you would never do any “really graphic sex stuff” like wearing something “way overly sexual,” especially when you have children in your household? :(
Sarah Isgur shown sporting a leather jacket similar to a leather jacket shown in Pride Puppy!, I am clutching my non-Republican pearls!
