- Trevor and Tamara Day created Avery the Fox to help children understand gender diversity. But at its heart, this is the story of two Canadian parents giving children something even more powerful: the freedom to discover who they are—and the confidence to love what they find.
- How families can use Avery the Fox.
- How educators can bring Avery into the classroom.
- How Avery helps adults reparent themselves.
- Buy the books
Long before Trevor and Tamara Day became the creators of Avery the Fox, they were simply parents who loved their children.
Like so many parents, they wanted to prepare their children for the world they were growing up in: a diverse world filled with people whose identities, families and experiences may be different from their own.
They wanted their children to have the knowledge to understand those differences and the empathy to treat others with respect. But they also wanted to give them something deeper.
They wanted their children to know themselves.
To trust themselves.
To understand that difference is not something to fear or overcome, but one of the strengths we each bring into the world.
Growing up on the Canadian Prairies in Alberta and Saskatchewan during the 1990s and 2000s, Trevor and Tamara knew what it was like to live in communities where diversity could be difficult to find.
It wasn’t that diverse people ‘did not exist back then,’ it was because diverse people and the unique lives they led were rarely reflected in the stories they were given as children.
And in a world without the internet, if you did not recognize yourself in the community you lived in, it could be difficult to imagine where you belonged, or if you even belonged at all.
Years later, Trevor and Tamara found themselves at an extraordinary crossroads.
They had become parents raising children during a period of tremendous change in Canada. Young people had more language to understand themselves. Families and classrooms were beginning to make room for a wider range of identities.
At the same time, many parents and educators were searching for gentle, age-appropriate ways to help children navigate this growing world.
Professionally, Trevor had become a family physician whose work includes gender-affirming hormone care.
Tamara had become an author and illustrator with the creative ability to turn complicated ideas into something children could see, feel and understand.
One brought knowledge from medicine and experiences supporting people through their gender journeys. The other brought the imagination and artistic skill to transform those lessons into a character children could love.
They may not have seemed like the people destined to create a series of gender-affirming children’s books. But perhaps they were exactly the people who needed to do it.
They understood what it meant to grow up without these stories.
They understood what parents needed because they were parents themselves.
And together, they possessed the knowledge, compassion and creativity to make something that had once been missing.
That something became Avery the Fox.
Meet Avery.
Avery is a young fox discovering their trans-feminine, trans-masculine or non-binary identity (yes, there are 3 books!) and learning to embrace the qualities that make them who they are.
Through accessible language and expressive illustrations, children are invited to accompany Avery on a journey of recognition and self-love. The story gives young readers a way to encounter gender diversity through warmth, curiosity and connection.
Tamara’s illustrations are central to that journey.
As Avery comes to understand themselves, the visual world around them changes.
Darker colours give way to brighter ones. Movement and light begin to fill the pages.
Avery’s glowing heart becomes a symbol of the joy that can emerge when we recognize ourselves and learn that who we are is worth celebrating.
(I’m not sobbing, you are!)
Children do not need to understand every word associated with gender to understand Avery’s heart.
They understand what it means to feel uncertain.
They understand the joy of discovering something that feels right.
They understand wanting to be known, included and loved.
That is what makes Avery’s story so powerful.
It begins with gender, but it reaches toward something universal: every child’s desire to know that there is a place in the world for them.
Avery the Fox: The Story of a Non-Binary Fox Finding Love for Themself
Avery the Fox is a gentle fox living in a tall-treed forest who feels different from the others. Avery doesn’t feel like a boy or a girl and struggles to understand why they don’t fit into the boxes others expect.
Children are already discovering who they are.
Adults sometimes treat identity as a subject that must be formally introduced.
Children experience it differently.
From their earliest years, children are already exploring who they are.
They develop preferences.
They experiment with clothes, games, names, friendships and ways of expressing themselves.
They notice similarities and differences between people.
They ask questions because asking questions is how they build an understanding of the world.
A book like Avery the Fox does not tell children who they should become. It expands the possibilities available to them.
It tells them there are many ways to be a person.
It tells them that meeting someone different can be an opportunity for connection.
Most importantly, it tells them that discovering something new about themselves does not place their belonging in doubt.
As a coming out coach, I have learned that coming out is about far more than making an announcement to other people. It is often a long and deeply personal process of recognizing yourself, finding the language for what you feel and learning to trust what you discover.
Imagine what becomes possible when children are given those tools early.
Imagine growing up knowing that curiosity about yourself is healthy.
That becoming is joyful.
That you do not need to have every answer before you are worthy of love.
That is the invitation at the heart of Avery’s story.
A picture book can open an entire world.
Picture books are often among the first places children encounter a world beyond their immediate surroundings.
Through stories, they can travel to unfamiliar places, experience life through someone else’s eyes and meet characters whose lives look different from their own.
And often, they explore these places, spaces and people with safe and caring adults who can answer questions that may arise from these books.
Those relationships may be imaginary, but the empathy children practise through them is real.
For a gender-diverse child, Avery may provide a meaningful moment of recognition: someone else feels this way, too.
For another child, Avery may bring to mind a sibling, friend or classmate.
For many children, Avery may simply become a beloved character who teaches them that every person deserves the freedom to be themselves.
All of these experiences matter.
Representation is about so much more than allowing children to see who they already are. It also gives them more possibilities for who they might become, and a deeper understanding of the people with whom they share their world.
When children grow up encountering difference through stories filled with warmth and possibility, inclusion becomes more than a lesson they are asked to remember. It becomes part of how they understand other people.
Read with Pride
This list features books for all ages featuring 2SLGBTQIA+ characters and themes. These stories encourage exploration, self-expression, empathy and allyship.
How families can use Avery the Fox.
Parents do not need perfect knowledge or carefully rehearsed answers before reading Avery the Fox with their children. They only need to be willing to begin.
- Read the story together and let Avery lead.
- Ask children what they notice in the illustrations.
- Talk about how Avery feels at different points in the story.
- Ask what changes as Avery learns more about themselves.
- Most importantly, create room for curiosity.
Children may ask questions about Avery’s identity, or they may focus entirely on the colours, emotions and adventure. Both responses are valuable.
Not every reading needs to become a formal lesson. Sometimes the most powerful thing an adult can do is place a new possibility in a child’s world and let it become familiar.
The book’s glossary and caregiver guide can help adults find simple language for conversations about gender, identity and self-expression.
Families can learn together without pretending to have every answer.
Children do not need adults to know everything.
They need adults who show them that not knowing is okay, questions are welcome, growth is possible and love remains steady throughout the journey.
How educators can bring Avery into the classroom.
In classrooms, Avery the Fox can support conversations about gender diversity, but its usefulness extends far beyond a single subject.
Educators can use the story to explore:
- Self-expression and identity
- Emotions and emotional growth
- Empathy and friendship
- Respect for differences
- The meaning of belonging
- Art, colour and visual storytelling
- The strengths each student brings to a community
Students might create a piece of art showing what makes their own hearts glow.
They could write or draw about a quality that makes them proud.
A class could discuss how different people, interests and ways of thinking make a community stronger.
These activities allow children to learn about one another while reinforcing a simple truth: no two people need to be the same to belong together.
Avery also gives educators another way to communicate something every student deserves to hear: There is room for you here.
A story for the children we once were.
Perhaps one of the most unexpected gifts of Avery the Fox is that it is not only for children.
Many adults grew up without words for what they felt.
They may never have seen families like theirs in books or encountered characters who expressed gender in ways that felt familiar.
Some learned to make themselves smaller before they ever had the opportunity to discover how expansive they could be.
Reading an affirming story as an adult cannot rewrite childhood. But it can offer us a new way to understand it.
We can read Avery’s story to the younger parts of ourselves that were still searching.
We can give ourselves the language, patience and acceptance we needed then.
We can recognize that our differences were never deficiencies.
They were parts of us waiting to be understood.
This is one form of reparenting: offering ourselves today the gentleness and permission we may not have received when we were young.
Avery’s glowing heart can become our own.
What begins with one little fox.
Trevor and Tamara Day did not begin with a grand plan to change how every child understands gender. They began as parents.
They saw a need in their family, their professions and their country. Then they brought together what they knew—medicine and art, evidence and imagination, parenthood and love—to create something that could help.
That small beginning now has the power to travel.
A child gains language for themselves.
A parent discovers a new way to listen.
An educator creates more room for every student.
A classroom learns that difference makes a community stronger.
An adult meets a younger version of themselves with compassion.
This is how stories change the world: not always through one enormous transformation, but through thousands of small moments when someone sees a new possibility and carries it forward.
Every child is becoming.
Every child deserves the freedom to explore who they are, the knowledge to understand the people around them and the confidence to love what makes them different.
Sometimes, giving them that future begins with opening a book.
And sometimes, the guide waiting inside is one very special little fox.
Learn more about Avery the Fox, explore the complete collection and find resources for families and educators on the Little Kit Company website.
