Tiki Malone and Baby Hugo, who is nine months old. Lucy Gellman.
It was the pink shoes that got Baby Hugo's attention.
Already, Tiki Malone had made herself at home, settling in with The Monster at the End of This Book and If You're A Drag Queen And You Know It. Now, she was ready to bring it all home with the story of Princess Pinecone. She smoothed her skirt, on which stars twinkled and planets glowed against the black night sky. A sea of small, bright Pride flags seemed to multiply in front of her.
And there was Hugo, making a delighted beeline for her glitter-covered pink-and-purple Oxfords. Malone opened to the front page, and transported readers to a far away land. On the ground below, Hugo crawled over and started exploring, undoing one blush-colored shoelace at a time.
Wednesday afternoon, Malone arrived at Mitchell Branch Library in cosmic high fashion —and with her signature googly-eyed green bookbag—for a drag queen story hour that has become an annual tradition at the Westville branch. Taking a beat to welcome her youngest attendees, she dove in, weaving questions, personal anecdotes and a little drag queen history into each story. Read about previous visits here, here and here.
The event doubled as a prelude to New Haven Pride, which takes place on Sunday, Sept. 7, from noon to 6 p.m. on Crown and Orange Streets. Another story hour with Malone will take place this Friday at 11 a.m. at the Ives Main Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL). More information is available here.
"This is to spread community and show that it's okay to be a little bit different," Malone said, grateful for a chance to get whimsical and vibrant in the middle of the week. "To let these kids know that you never have to stop using your imagination."
It’s a mission that she lives herself, one page at a time. Pulling out a copy of Lil Miss Hot Mess' If You're A Drag Queen And You Know It, Malone introduced the queens on the inside of the book jacket, pausing for favorites like "Retta Booke" and "Sharon Boogies.” On one side of the room, Children's Librarian Sarah Quigley beamed, dressed in a rainbow of colors that extended from her aquamarine NHFPL t-shirt to her skirt below.
Closer to a reading rug in the center of the room, Library Aide Taya McClease had become an impromptu model, with a Pride flag draped over her shoulders like a superhero cape and heart-shaped rainbow stickers on her back and cheeks. Every so often, a pint-sized reader came over to inspect her hairdo, where she had criss-crossed two miniature Progress Pride flags through a high bun.
"If you're a drag queen and you know it, twirl around!" Malone exclaimed at the front of the room, and a few young listeners stood to twirl. In the corner, Elm City Montessori School third grader Hypatia Hughes leaned all in, her flags fluttering as she spun. Malone beamed and turned the page, revealing a burst of blue and pink as her characters extended their arms and shouted "Yaaas Queen!" In the room, a polite chorus of tiny, tinny voices joined in.
Top: Sarah Quigley fusses over a four-month-old neighbor. Bottom: Hypatia Hughes, a third grader at Elm City Montessori, adds some Pride Month flair to her outfit.
"Tiki, why do drag queens mouth the words?" Quigley asked a few pages later, as Malone read off another set of commands.
"Some drag queens mouth the words because we're lip-syncing!" Malone replied in a sing-song, her purple wig luminescent and bouncing just a little. "I'm sure we all do it in front of the mirror at home. I get to do it on stage!"
Minutes later, she had pulled out another favorite, Kate Beaton's 2015 The Princess and the Pony, traveling from the bright lights and campy glam of drag performance to a land of warriors, where Princess Pinecone—"the smallest warrior," Malone crowed—just wanted a horse for her birthday. Turning the page, Malone outlined what Princess Pinecone was actually working with: a small, round, bug-eyed pony that was impossible to ride.
"And it farted too much," Malone said, downtrodden. Giggles filled the room.
Nine-month-old Hugo squirmed joyfully in his mom's arms, and then spotted the shoes, placed flat to the floor as Malone arched her back. Making his way across the rug on all fours, he headed to Malone's feet, inspecting the pink-and-purple patterning with the care of a conservator looking over a precious painting for the first time.
Over his head, Malone read calmly, her voice swirling through the room. The princess tried to teach the pony to be a real warrior horse — but the pony was hopeless. Hugo paid it no mind: he had shoes to inspect.
When his mom, Westvillian Chelsea Roncato, crawled closer, Malone motioned to her that there was no need: Hugo was doing exactly what he was supposed to. He was flexing his curiosity, one shoelace at a time. When he ran a hand along the shoes and untied a long, pink shoelace, lifting it in a pudgy fist, Malone seemed delighted.
She later explained that for many kids, story times like Wednesday's are their first and sometimes only introduction to a drag performer. She wants to make it as joyful and open-hearted as possible.
Wednesday, that joy was contagious. "The library's been incredible," said Roncato, who worked for years as a teacher in Ontario before moving to Westville. For her, exposing kids to the infinite worlds inside books—and the different lived experiences of their characters—is "the most important thing I believe you can do," she said.
Since last year, she's become a regular at the library’s weekly Stay & Play sessions, where Quigley and fellow staff members create all kinds of magic with books, songs, sign language and a very beloved bubble machine. It's also close to her heart, Roncato added: she worked in her own local library when she was younger, doing summer programming for kids.
Top: Hugo, mom Chelsea Roncato, and her lifelong friend Renée Carpino. Bottom: Finn Wrye.
Nearby, Malone's assistant and son, Finn Wrye, sat smiling as he watched from the corner. Now a freshman in high school, Wrye has always loved libraries: he started visiting them as a baby, and would walk to the one in his hometown with his parents by the time he was two. While he can't imagine doing drag like his mom—he's way introverted, he said—he has a soft spot for story hours.
"They teach kids how to be accepting to others and how to be themselves," he said.
That acceptance, perhaps, could not come at a more critical time. Since his inauguration in January of this year, President Donald Trump has continued an attack on LGBTQ+ rights, and particularly on trans youth, that was already well underway in state legislatures across the country. Even before the 2024 election, the American Civil Liberties Union had tracked over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation, from bathroom bans to classroom censorship of books addressing sex and gender.
Since January, those legislative assaults have only increased, placing the health, safety, and wellbeing of millions of LGBTQ+ Americans at risk. Connecticut has not been immune to those actions: in July, Yale New Haven Health and Connecticut Children’s Hospital both announced that they were ending gender-affirming care for minors, leaving hundreds of LGBTQ+ youth suddenly in the lurch.
Wednesday, it turned out that a purple-haired, pink-shoed reader with a Miss Frizzle aesthetic and a knack for character voices was exactly the antidote. As Malone finished reading on a high note (the pony was still flatulent and ineffective, but Princess Pinecone was coming around), a knot of little bodies formed around her, waiting for a moment to chat with drag royalty. Every so often, the rise and fall of conversation stopped for the sharp snap! of a fan.
McClease, in the midst of getting fashion advice from two pre-teens, soaked it all in. As a kid growing up in the city’s Fair Haven neighborhood, she saw the Grand Avenue branch library as her second home. By the time she was studying creative writing at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, the Ives Main Branch had become a safe space for her and her friends.
“I was like, ‘This is a space where I can just hang out,’” she remembered. Her mom would call to see where she was, and be delighted that her daughter had installed herself among the stacks to get homework done or catch up with friends.
While McClease never pictured herself working in the NHFPL—she went to college for illustration—she’s thrilled to be there. Working with Quigley—and with young people—has made her think more critically about language, socialization, and gender, from how she refers to her partner to feeling comfortable in her own skin.
“I feel like especially now, we have to be a voice against the voices that say, ‘Be afraid of people who are different,’” Quigley said, and the words seemed to resonate with McClease. “With kids, they’re so curious. That’s naturally who they are. And they need to just be who they are.”
"It's Like A Ministry"
Top: Tiki Malone with Wren Goldsman-Kosmides. "It's important because it shows the range of pride and gender expression," said Wren's mom, Ariana Kosmides, who is a social worker at Wilbur Cross High School. Bottom: Taya McClease rocks her New Haven Pride look for Malone after the event.
In many ways, Wednesday's story hour is just one of the ways that Mitchell—and the New Haven Free Public Library more broadly—has centered early childhood education, joyful play and creative thinking in so much of what it does, from a Pride Month crafting day in June to weekly storytime at all five of the organization's branches.
For Quigley, who joined the library in November 2022, it's a way to foster tight-knit community and connection through literacy, and also well beyond it. When kids come to story time, they learn to share space (and books, so many books) with each other. They learn when to listen and when to participate, when to take up space and when to cede the floor to other tiny humans. They learn how to see each other.
“It is a community that is ready and wants programming for kids of all ages, but especially little kids, which is very special, and they’re also looking for community with each other,” Quigley said. “We look out for each other. We take care of each other. A lot of families have met each other here at Stay & Play … and they support each other.”
For her, it’s also second nature. Long before Quigley worked as a school librarian in Austin, Texas, where she and her partner were before New Haven, she grew up in the Church of Christ, a branch of Evangelical Christianity that “it just a little more intense, if you can imagine, than Baptists," she said.
She doesn’t identify with that religion anymore. But the pillars of building community that she grew up with stayed with her, including and especially the sense of showing up for other people. So did her love for music (“the singing would blow your socks off … I knew how to harmonize before I could read,” she remembered) that she weaves into story time, with songs like “The More We Get Together” and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" that kids know the signs to.
“The way that I approach my work, it’s almost like a ministry,” she said. “I’m not trying to push a religion. But it’s about building community … as a young person, I would go to weddings, I would go to funerals, we would sing at the nursing homes, and I was around all these parts of life. I didn’t realize that that was something that not everyone had.”
“It’s not just like, I read the stories and then we’re done,” she said. “I build relationships with these families. They come to me for advice about early literacy, childhood development, and that sort of thing, but also to share tips about being a parent and working with kids and the ways of really engaging them. We need that connection.”