Have you seen the new Turtles Move? TMNT Mutant Mayhem.
Well I have. About 100 times already. My son Gabe is OBSESSED.
So after listening to the soundtrack (which I highly recommend. All our songs from the 90s, curated by Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose. It's a great car playlist on the way home from daycare pickup.)
After watching for the 99th time, a scene caught me. The turtles just wanted to be able to exist in the human world. Go to high school. They wanted ACCEPTANCE.
Then it clicked. Throughout all of our movies and stories, it is always about acceptance.
Shrek, Zootopia, the Breakfast Club, you name it.
As people, we crave it.
And so I related it back to Inklings. Sometimes Lex and I have ideas and we don't really know why we do them. We just know they feel right.
Lex wrote our books making sure each infant novel featured a baby with their Inklings best friend. Each baby has a different race, gender or family dynamic so that kids can see themselves and other kids can grow up knowing that not everyone is the same, and think that is normal, not weird or something to be bullied about.
We started with saying that Inklings is about kindness and acceptance.
But we took it further and want to inspire kids to take action. To not just accept other people's differences, but to help support them and stand next to them.
I guess we've got some more infant novels to write...
