Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon Coloring Book

Overview

Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon Coloring Book was published in 2010 by Reach And Teach / PM Press. PM Press describes the book as a reworking of fairy tales and nursery rhymes that moves beyond rigid gender expectations. The collection record is careful: it says the book does not picture same-sex-parent families, but does include queer relationship imagery, disability visibility, and a pronoun page. That makes the item important as a companion record rather than as a same-sex-parent story. It shows how the collection also documents activity books, social-justice retail networks, and gender-diversity teaching materials that circulated around LGBTQ family literature.^{[1][2][4][7][8][10][11]}

Coloring As Revision

The book uses coloring-book form to revise familiar cultural scripts. PM Press frames it through fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and real children's anecdotes, with characters who do not fit narrow gender roles. This makes the object participatory: readers are not only receiving a story but also coloring, rewriting, and discussing it. In the collection, that form matters because activity books record how family and gender diversity were taught through use.^[2][4][7]

Queer Context Without A Parent Plot

The collection record states that no same-sex-parent families are pictured. Its LGBTQ relevance comes instead through images and captions such as two women on a wedding cake, two spoons running away together, and a pronoun scene. That distinction is important. The item belongs to the collection because it helps explain a wider ecosystem of queer, feminist, and gender-diverse materials around children's books.^[1][5][7]

Pronouns And Classroom Afterlife

The collection record notes a page in which a child chooses the pronoun Ze. A later Wiley gender and women's studies anthology reproduced material from the book with PM Press permission, giving the title a documented afterlife in adult education. That afterlife connects the object to classroom discussion about language, gender, and self-description, while keeping its original form as a child-facing coloring book visible.^[1][8]

Reach And Teach / PM Press Network

Reach And Teach and PM Press give the item a strong network identity. Reach And Teach's Pride page connects this book with Girls Are Not Chicks, Operation Marriage, The Big Gay Alphabet Coloring Book, and other social-justice titles. That network helps explain why the item appears in this collection even though it is not a same-sex-parent picture book: it sits beside family stories as a related teaching object.^{[10][11][2][13][15]}

Timeline

1. 2004Reach And Teach LaunchesReach And Teach traces its work to a peace and social-justice learning-company model.^[10]
2. 2007PM Press FoundedPM Press product sheets describe the publisher's independent and activist publishing mission.^[14]
3. 2009Girls Are Not ChicksGirls Are Not Chicks appears in the same Reach And Teach / PM Press coloring-book network.^[13][14]
4. 2010PublicationPM Press lists Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon Coloring Book as a September 2010 paperback.^[2]
5. 2011GLBTTALA ReviewA GLBTTALA review discussed the book as a gender-stereotype coloring book with questions for readers.^[7]
6. 2017Anthology ReproductionA Wiley gender and women's studies anthology included material from the book with PM Press permission.^[8]

Reach And Teach / PM Press Context

The item belongs to a sequence of coloring and activity books about gender, sexuality, and social justice.

Citation

Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon Coloring Book. Jacinta Bunnell and Nathaniel Kusinitz. Reach And Teach / PM Press, 2010. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-100.

Sources

Cover image from PM Press.

1. Tarpey-Schwed catalog seed record · catalog
2. PM Press page for Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon Coloring Book · publisher
3. Reach And Teach product listing for Sometimes the Spoon · publisher retailer
4. WorldCat record for Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon · library catalog
5. Roger Sutton review via PM Press · review
6. PFLAG Greensboro review via PM Press · review
7. GLBTTALA review via PM Press · review
8. Wiley gender and women's studies anthology excerpt · textbook excerpt
9. Apple Books record for Sometimes the Spoon · ebook metadata
10. Reach And Teach story page · organization history
11. Reach And Teach Pride page · organization resource
12. Jacinta Bunnell PM Press author page · publisher author page
13. PM Press page for Girls Are Not Chicks Coloring Book · publisher
14. PM Press product sheet for Girls Are Not Chicks · publisher PDF
15. PM Press page for The Big Gay Alphabet Coloring Book · publisher