The Pirate Mums

Product Information

Just Like Us provides free resources for EYFS to Key Stage 4 to celebrate LGBTQ+ inclusion and diverse families in all key subject areas of the curriculum, including posters, lesson plans, assemblies, form time activities and video resources. Or simply by people who have different hobbies. Little boys who don’t want to play football, despite being encouraged to.

This powerful little story creates a space where the complex feelings associated with losing somebody can be gently explored and validated. Maya has lost her mum, and is missing her. We don’t know how or why she has gone, and that is part of the book’s beauty and potential– she is simply absent. In fact, if they don’t, Me and My Dysphoria Monster is a wonderful lesson in empathy for children who are growing up in an increasingly diverse social landscape.That idea turned into The Pirate Mums, published by Oxford University Press and illustrated by Kate Greenaway Medal nominee Lydia Corry. Our differences make us special More than half of children in the UK are now brought up outside the "nuclear family",which is usually defined as a mother and father who live with their children.So it is delightful to see books such as A Family Is A Family Is A Family (Sara O’Leary), More People To Love Me (Mo O’Hara), and In Every House, On Every Street (Jess Hitchman) embracing family diversity with sensitivity, humour and care.

In a world where we are increasingly aware of, and knowledgeable about, gender dysphoria in trans children, a book like this helps to put complex feelings into simple words. As soon as I heard that my story was going to be published, I knew that I’d want teachers in particular to take it to their hearts. And there are a number of reasons for that.There are a number of wonderful books, which specifically talk about the different shapes families can take (Todd Parr’s The Family Book and Mary Hoffman’s The Great Big Book of Families are two recent examples). But, sometimes – often – a lesson is more powerful when it’s wrapped in a story. And whilst, due simply to age and changing publishing production values, the books perhaps didn’t quite stand up to the jazzy frontlist titles my girls were enjoying at the same time, it was quite clear to see that they had an immediate and deep connection with stories that showed a family with two mums. My daughters returned to Mommy, Mama and Me and others again and again. And they search out and talk about any incidental same-sex couples they see in other books, too – such as Lauren Ace and Jenny Lovlie’s beautiful The Girls or Sue Hendra and Paul Linnett’s Snowball. Time and again, they put their own experience of love, as they see it shared between their two mums, centre stage, even when that love is not the main focus of the actual stories. It does this through an easy-to-comprehend metaphor that every child can follow, whether they suffer with dysphoria or not.