I Promise

I Promise begins with a young child’s question to her mother: “Mama, you know Miracle from swim class? If she has two dads, where did she come from?” It is, in some ways, a question that most parents anticipate, and many answer differently. The question of how to answer where babies come from is not new, but having to explain where a baby with queer parents, or one parent, or more than two parents comes from may seem daunting. In Hernandez’s story, the young child’s mother deftly and tenderly gives an answer to this question. The core premise of Hernandez’s work, the answer to the opening question of the book, is that each child comes from a promise to love gently and fiercely.

Hernandez has done a wonderful job in writing I Promise. There are alternating passages of the young child asking her mother about various types of families and the mother then giving her answers. The answers are all beautiful, poetic, and succinct. I do sometimes take issues with overly-sentimental books that make generalizations about children and families. A book about how every child has a safe home or two loving parents obviously does not ring true for children who do not have those things, but Hernandez seems to have been careful about making these generalizations and instead contextualizes ideas of safe homes and loving parents within the families she is referring to and the beliefs of the parents being represented. For example, the first explanation contains the phrase “Miracle came from a promise that every child deserves a safe home…” This is about what Miracle’s parents believe, and the promise they’ve made to Miracle, rather than a statement that a safe home is something that every child will have.

One of the things that I really appreciate about this book is its normalized depiction of queer parenting. Often a book featuring queer parents will be ‘about’ queer parents. It might say, ‘Look at all these different families! Look at the ways in which this family is different from this family.’ In I Promise, the parents and the makeups of the families are the background, or the backbone, of the story. It is tempting to simply portray a variety of families, especially because queer families are almost never accidental. Whether through surrogacy, adoption, in-vitro, or other methods, queer parents almost always have to put in a great deal of work before the idea of having a child is even a possibility. Still, rather than focus on who the parents are, the loving relationships those parents are forging with their children take the fore in I Promise. This shift is subtle, yet important, in providing more and better depictions of queer people and queer families in children’s literature.

I Promise is well-designed, and the illustrations by Syrus Marcus Ware are beautiful. The layout is consistent throughout the book. Text is represented on one side of the page, with the child’s words in bold as a means of denoting who is speaking, and on the other side of the page is a single-page illustration. There is plenty of white space around the images which are rendered in grey with some pops of colour. I did initially wonder if the grey skin tones were akin to those of Amy Sherald, who painted the portrait of Michelle Obama in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. To my understanding, the lack of pigmentation may act to draw attention to commonalities, rather than differences, while still having characters who are read as people of colour. Ware may or may not be doing the same thing here, but, either way, the use of grey with small touches or large swathes of colour is effective. Seeing a diverse range of people and body types represented in the images is refreshing and important as the queer narrative is often dominated by white, cisgender gay men. The only element of the illustrations and design that gave me pause is, unfortunately, the cover. While it is not a bad cover, I don’t know that it accurately captures the beauty and tone of what is inside the book, and it is a beautiful book.

I Promise is not necessarily one of those books that will catch the eye of most kids walking by it on a display, and it may not be the type of book most kids ask to hear over and over. But for some kids, the ones whose tastes run to the sentimental, who enjoy books like Love You Forever, this book will satisfy. Most libraries could use more quality queer content for children. This is the type of book that librarian’s jump at to put on booklists and parents (especially queer parents and queer parents of colour) will appreciate and will read over and over at bedtime.