Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. The first day of school is always kind of scary.

You know, like, what if someone's mean to you? What if nobody wants to sit next to you? What if nobody wants to be your friend?

And it's even scarier if you're, you know, different. Today's book is a children's

book titled Calvin about a transgender boy who's nervous about his first day of school and the

family who supports him through it. The book's authors, J.R. and Vanessa Ford, are parents to a transgender

kid. And what's fascinating about this interview with NPR's

Audie Cornish is how the Fords are also just figuring this out as they go along, something

that's maybe extremely relatable if you have kids. There's one part where they talk about

reading the one book available about trans kids to their child and leaving out the word transgender entirely, which they thought at the time was the right call.

It's just one of those lessons of parenting you've got to learn along the way, I guess.

Here's the interview.

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Calvin was always a boy, but the world did not recognize him that way.

That's the story in the new children's book.

It's called Calvin. And in it, authors J.R. and Vanessa Ford show how young Kelvin navigates the complicated feelings of being a transgender kid

and how he comes into expressing who he really is. The Ford's are also parents to two children, Ronnie and Ellie, who is trans, and inspired this book.

...