Reading Time: < 1 minute

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.

Yes.

Sugar Creek Elementary, a public school in the Madison, Wisconsin, suburb of Verona, used the book “A House for Everyone.”

It was part of a bullying prevention unit, school district spokesperson Marcie Pfeifer-Soderbloom told Wisconsin Watch on April 21, 2023.

The 2018 book “challenges gender stereotypes and shows 4- to 8-year-olds that it is OK to be yourself,” its publisher says.

Some excerpts:

“Ivy is a girl …. She never, ever chooses to wear a dress.”

“Alex does not feel like just a boy or just a girl. They feel very uncomfortable being called he or she.”

“Tom is a boy. When he was born, everyone thought he was a girl. They gave him a girl’s name. This made Tom sad. When he grew up, he told everyone he was a boy. Now everyone calls him he and Tom. This makes Tom really happy.”

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Google Docs Verona School District email reply 042123

Jessica Kingsley Publishers A House for Everyone

YouTube A House for Everyone (video reading)

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Tom Kertscher joined Wisconsin Watch as a full-time reporter in October 2024. He started as a fact checker in January 2023 and contributes to our collaboration with the The Gigafact Project to fight misinformation online. Kertscher is a former longtime newspaper reporter, including at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is a contributing writer for Milwaukee Magazine and sports freelancer for The Associated Press.