Psychology professor Gayle Pitman’s picture book about Pride parades helps parents and teachers introduce sexual orientation concepts to very young kids. This Day in June‘s appended reading guide gives adults high points of LGBT culture and history. Since our June 2014 interview, it won the American Library Association’s 2015 Stonewall Award, the International Reading Association’s Notable Books for a Global Society Award and was named on The Advocate’s “40 Under 40” list as one of the most important books of the decade. In this interview with Out in the Bay host Eric Jansen, Pitman reads This Day in June — all 63 words! — and talks about the differences between writing for academics and for toddlers. Pitman, who teaches the psychology of sexual orientation and other subjects at Sacramento City College, says she finds today’s queer college students largely ignorant of LGBT history and is doing what she can to fix that. (Live interview conducted and aired 6/26/14, rebroadcast 6/11/15.)
This Day in June is published by Magination Press, an imprint of the American Psychological Association.