People often ask me why my co-author, Ashley Lanni, and I decided to write a picture book about consent and how we managed to do so without making the topic sexual.

Initially, we had actually written a whole anthology of inclusive books including some about the LGTBQIA2S+ community, and privilege. However, we quickly realized that anthologies of children's books don't sell as well, so if we wanted our work to reach as many readers as possible we would have to try to publish our stories individually. We reworked our favourites, the first being The Bum Drum Conundrum.

As a rape survivor, I am very passionate about educating others in terms of consent to help prevent as much sexual violence as possible. We thought a picture book would be a great way to start educating kids about consent especially as it had never been done before. The main issue was finding a way to talk about consent without making it sexual. However, though consent is often talked about in a sexual context it isn't inherently so. For example, in The Bum Drum Conundrum we discuss consent in terms of non-sexual touching as in a game of tag. Consent does not only apply to sex but to all issues pertaining to your agency as a person.

If you're an educator and you want to teach your students or kids about consent but are not sure how to go about it you could always download our free consent kit for teaching children about consent using The Bum Drum Conundrum. I have provided a link below. Thank you for reading! Your support means a lot!

https://www.melanie-ashley-books.com/...