Yes, I Am Jazz Is Banned!

I Am Jazz is a picture book. It has 32 pages and bright, cheerful illustrations. It tells the story of a child who has “a girl brain but a boy body,” based on the real life of co-author Jazz Jennings, who came out as transgender at age five. The book explains, in simple language aimed at children ages four to eight, what it feels like to be transgender. It has been one of the most banned books in America since its publication.

In 2015, the Mount Horeb Area School District in Wisconsin canceled a planned reading after the evangelical Liberty Counsel group threatened to sue. In 2017, Rocklin Academy Gateway in California faced backlash after a teacher read it to kindergartners. The book appeared on the ALA’s top ten most challenged list in 2015 and 2016. Since 2022, it has been swept into the broader wave of bans targeting LGBTQ+ content in Texas, Florida, and Utah schools. The challenges cite the book’s transgender content, its supposed sex education material, and its “offensive viewpoints.”

Why You Should Read This

I Am Jazz exists because transgender children exist, and they deserve to see themselves in a book. That sentence shouldn’t be controversial, but here we are. The book is gentle, straightforward, and age-appropriate. It doesn’t discuss surgery or hormones. It says: some kids feel different from how the world sees them, and that’s okay.

The ferocity of the opposition tells you something important about what’s at stake. A 32-page picture book with cartoon illustrations has generated lawsuits, school board battles, and legislative action across multiple states. The people trying to ban it aren’t protecting children from something harmful. They’re trying to make certain children invisible. Jazz Jennings wrote this book so that kids like her would know they aren’t alone. That’s the entire threat: a child seeing herself reflected in a story.