“I see my role as a trusted adult,” says Canadian sex educator Cory Silverberg. “A lot of advice for parents skims over the fact that they are not good at stuff. We’re bad at friendships. We are bad with money: we do an online shop at 1am, but we also know we need to make our kids financially literate. At the end of a long day, if my kid asks a question, I’ll give them a short answer. That is why we need trusted adults.”

It’s hard to think of an area that needs a trusted adult to update and rejig it more than sex education. And with a trio of books – What Makes A Baby, Sex is a Funny Word and You Know, Sex – illustrated with friendly faces and unintimidating bodies by artist Fiona Smyth, Silverberg may have done just that. The trilogy, according to the New York Times, has “quietly upended the genre”. The books are aimed at audiences from young children up to teens and educate children in calm, neutral terms, making room for diverse experiences – and for doubt.

A good example is the definition of sex. In You Know, Sex – Silverberg’s 2022 book aimed at teenagers – it’s seen as “a word people use to describe something they do to feel good in their bodies. People call this ‘having sex’. Having sex is something people can choose to do on their own or with other people.” This is revolutionary for those of us raised on the likes of Claire Rayner’s Body Book, where sex was “a special grown-up way of loving someone very much. It is the most loving sort of cuddle there is for grown-ups.”

Everything is reconsidered. So Silverberg says: “I wouldn’t ever say: ‘An orgasm is a good thing.’ For lots of people it is and for some people it isn’t. Sometimes an orgasm gives someone a migraine, or makes someone cry.”

If the tone feels unusual, it’s because the books’ content is informed not only by Silverberg’s knowledge but also by discussions with young people about their own questions and experience. It’s from the perspective of many people of different races, classes, sexualities, genders, abilities and body shapes rather than from one grown-up eager to deal with the facts of life. In fact, many parents may learn something new.

In the touching introduction to You Know, Sex, Silverberg acknowledges this: “This book is for adults, too. Most adults didn’t have the opportunity to think and talk about sex and gender when they were younger. There will be things in this book that are new for adults. If you know an adult who is open to reading this book with you, remind them that they may need time before they are ready to talk about what they learned here.”

I can hear that playful but pragmatic tone when I speak to Silverberg, such as, when talking about other books for children that feature queer experiences, they say: “Even the well-meaning books are kind of shitty. There’s a gay penguin book – what’s it called? People love it. But it teaches kids that it’s weird to be gay.”

Silverberg’s own focus is realistic rather than idealistic. The books feel like graphic novels drawn in bold and friendly colours. They feature four children from different backgrounds, with a range of shapes and skin tones from pink to green. Definitely no penguins. “[My books are] very much set in the world. Some educators say that you shouldn’t talk about boys and girls – just gender. But that doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand gender. You need to start with the world kids live in – which is one of boys and girls. But in the second book [Sex is a Funny Word, which is aimed at eight years up] I do explain that there are boys and girls, and the rest of us.”

Silverberg identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. “I use the word queer, which is mostly about my gender. I’ve come to use the term non-binary, and that’s pretty new for me, because I grew up when that wasn’t an option.”

They are a parent to a child aged under 10, and they themselves were brought up in a liberal Toronto household in the 1970s by a children’s librarian and a sex therapist. “When I was a teen, all my friends thought it was so cool that I had a dad who was a sex therapist. I was allowed to be in my room alone or with friends. I knew what a condom was.”

When they were 17 and looking for a summer job, their dad found them one as a sales assistant at Lovecraft, the first sex-positive, female-friendly sex shop in Canada. They ended up working at Lovecraft for nine years while they attended college and got a masters of education at the University of Toronto.

Through their shop work, Silverberg discovered a special interest in helping disabled clientele, and when they finished studying they founded Come As You Are, a co-operative that offers workshops on pleasure and caters to the needs of disabled people. In 2003 they authored a book for adults, The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability.

Then some friends asked Silverberg to write a book for children about how babies are made. The father of the couple was a trans man, but Silverberg realised they wanted to tell that story for all children – those born through reproductive technology such as IVF, donors and surrogates as well as through intercourse. After the book – What Makes a Baby – was rejected by a series of publishers, in 2015 Silverberg created a Kickstarter to self-publish. They were looking for $9,500 but instead raised $65,000 in 30 days, and the book went on to win a string of awards in the US. A lot of early supporters were LGBTQ+ families, but the desire to find new ways to talk about sex and relationships was stronger than they’d imagined.

“The books are queer,” they say, “because they’re absolutely trying to make a world I want to live in, where there’s nothing unusual about two boys having a crush on each other – but they always reflect the actual world, which I don’t perceive as being super full of joy. When I see [a book] saying everything’s great or it’s all about love, I think: Well, that’s not my world.”

Luckily Silverberg’s world and their books do feature the things that most parents and children worry about, from watching porn to kissing with braces, sexual safety and boundaries. Choice and consent are always front and centre. At the end of You Know, Sex, the children are told: “We all deserve respect, trust, joy, justice, and lots of choices.”

It’s fitting that Silverberg’s closing words to me, a marker of their diligence and generosity of spirit, are questions that could just as well serve as the guiding principle for their work: “How was that? Do you have everything you need?”

What Makes a Baby, Sex is a Funny Word and You Know, Sex are published by Seven Stories Press