Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag

Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders and Illustrated by Steven Salerno

Four Paw Prints

So, a long time ago there were boys and there were girls.  Boys wore dark colors and played with building toys. Girls work pastel colors and played with dolls.  These boys and girls grew up and did what was expected of men and women. But, what about the children who grew up to be adults who didn’t feel comfortable doing what was expected?  Many times these adults had a hard time finding a job or finding a place to call home. Sometimes these adults would even be kicked out of their own families. You may be wondering what these adults did wrong that made life so difficult.  The truth is they did NOTHING wrong. They just fell in love. But in their cases some men fell in love with another man or some women fell in love with another woman. Today, this happens all the time and people rarely have a problem with these relationships.  But a long time ago these relationships were not allowed. Harvey Milk thought this was wrong. People should be able to love whoever they wanted without having to worry about being treated poorly. Not only did Harvey Milk want to change the laws to allow people to love who they wanted, he wanted to create a symbol that could help people feel good about themselves and who they loved.  Harvey Milk went to an artist named Gilbert Baker to create a symbol. The symbol Gilbert Baker created was the rainbow flag. The rainbow flag was first used at the Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco in 1978 and this flag is still used today. I thought this book was very good. It’s a great way to introduce this topic and these issues to children. My only concern was that countries like Russia were listed as flying the rainbow flag.  The implication in this section of the book is that the countries are supporting the flag but this is not true. There may be people in Russia and other countries who support the flag but the government does not. In some countries people can be arrested for showing support to others. I would have like to see this made clearer in the book or just include countries that currently support the flag and the pride movement. As always ask a parent before visiting a new website, but if you would like to learn more about Harvey Milk please visit http://milkfoundation.org/ or https://www.history.com/topics/harvey-milk.  To learn more about the Rainbow Flag visit, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160615-the-history-of-the-rainbow-flag.