Reviews

AS I AM is a beautiful, wonderful book. I was privileged to see this story and some of its art in its earliest drafts, and I am blown away by the final work. 

The sweet and tender story that Celeste Finn tells about a nonbinary kid and their cat is an important one, and the artwork is perfect. In the hands of a less talented illustrator, the main character (Kai) might be read as a boy or girl and thus undermine the story, but Kristina Neudakhina nails it. And the hand-lettered text draws the reader into Kai’s experience, making the narrative more intimate and Kai even more relatable. 

As much as this is a story about a nonbinary kid, it’s also universal. Who can’t relate to sometimes feeling lonely and not understood, or being grateful for a friend who gets it? “Can’t you see?” asks Kai. “I want to be loved for who I am, as I am.” That’s all of us.

AS I AM’s included 24-page gender guide is a useful and affirming resource — and it’s also a document full of love, coming from a childhood educator who clearly cares about the environments we create for ALL our kids, and who collaborated with “folks from across the gender spectrum” to do it justice. I thought I knew this stuff already, and I learned from it.

— Audrey Beth Stein, author of LOOK AT ME and the Lambda Literary Award Finalist memoir MAP