Our Rainbow Treehouse

Our Rainbow Treehouse (2023) (Genre: Children)

About: Our Rainbow Treehouse follows Ernesto, Halima, Kalani, Sukhi and Kofi as they try to build a rainbow colored treehouse, but they struggled to work as a team. Ernesto proposes that they share with the others what they do best. At first, it was difficult for the kids to understand how their unique skills could help. However, it quickly became apparent that when used together in harmony, their individual gifts could help create something truly amazing and awesome – like a rainbow colored treehouse! At the end of it all, each child could celebrate in unity for their accomplishments and embrace acceptance for who they are. Through teamwork and open-mindedness, the idea of inclusion is presented as something beautiful instead of intimidating.

What the author has to say: While thinking about what I wanted to do for my next book I ran across illustrator Usama Fasih, what fascinated me about Usama was his ability to effortlessly create characters of different nationalities. I always had a children’s story in mind about kids trying to build a treehouse but being assigned tasks that they were not good at and becoming frustrated that they treehouse was not coming together. Once they realize they need to play to their best skills and work as a team everything comes together. I noticed so many children’s stories had Caucasian characters, 50% with 27% being animals or objects leaving just 23% as non-white humans according to Every Effort Matters

This set off a chain of events to bring Our Rainbow Treehouse to life using non-Caucasian characters. Usama worked on the character’s look while I researched names and Halima, Ernesto, Kalani, Sukhi and Kofi were “born.”

Easter Egg Fact: Within 13 days of the release of the book we received a barrage of messages stating we are pushing the “gay agenda” (Being fabulous? Brunch?) by simply having the title Our Rainbow Treehouse. Below is just one of those messages:

T.M.: Shawn Ness the name rainbow treehouse automatically tells me it’s gay and lesbian because of their rainbow flag. Change the name of the book.

I pointed to the researched fact that children are more receptive to multi color objects (such as rainbows) then single colors. I also pointed to 5 different Christian children’s books with the word Rainbow in the title but it fell on deaf ears… my bad I know not to engage.

SO NOT only am I NOT going to change the title BUT I am going to DOUBLE DOWN. If you are officially part of the organization Drag Queen Story Hour you can request a free copy of Our Rainbow Treehouse by emailing me at AuthorlyDotUS@gmail.com if you are not with the organization officially you can reach out to me on Facebook THOUGH your drag persona and request a free copy as well.