What a difference five decades makes.

In 1970, Whitney Darrow Jr., a cartoonist for the New Yorker, wrote a children’s book, I’m glad I’m a boy!: I’m glad I’m a girl! Alternating pages delineated traditional gender roles: “Boys are doctors.” “Girls are nurses.” “Boys fix things.” “Girls need things fixed.” Darrow never clarified whether the book was meant to be serious or satirical, but—fun fact—it was enough in part to inspire Marlo Thomas to create the iconic children’s record album, Free to Be…You and Me.

Lindsay Achtman’s My Proudest Moment upends gender tropes that were codified by Darrow in a picture book that Kirkus Reviews finds to be “a clever tale that may upend traditional expectations and bolster young athletes’ confidence.”

In the story, two unnamed children pursue their ambitions to be a football player and a dancer. The spare text and charming illustrations (by Andra Pana) find connection between the two seemingly different activities. Both children view other practitioners with wonder, and both take tentative turns emulating them. (“I begin prancing around my yard, chanting numbers to my stuffed animals”/“I bumble through each spin and jump, but I never give up.”)

After hard work and practice (“Practices become performances. Nerves turn to joy.”/“My muscles power through, making me stronger than ever before.”), each finds the confidence for a winning performance. (“My hard work has led me to this incredible moment.”/“Win or lose…I’m so proud to be me!”)

Spoiler alert: The dancer is revealed to be a boy, the football player a girl.

Achtman, a mother of two and a Michigan kindergarten teacher, was inspired to write My Proudest Moment by an incident involving her cousin: When he was five years old, he became interested in dance. “He was all excited for his first class,” she shares. “When he got there, one of the other mothers looked at him and said, ‘It’s so nice you came to support your sister.’ It totally crushed his self-esteem. He ended up not wanting to go into the class and…quitting altogether.”

Achtman has been an elementary school teacher for 10 years, a kindergarten teacher for four. She reports that her book’s message is resonating with children. “One told me that her friend would enjoy the book because she wants to play hockey and not many of her friends who are girls play the sport,” she says. “Kids today, I’ve noticed, have an energy to try and do everything. I encourage my students and teach them they can follow their dreams, even if they don’t fit into a traditional box.”

To illustrate this, the book includes three essays written by football player Rebecca Longo, professional choreographer Danté Henderson, and American Ballet Theater dancer Conor Holloway. Writes Longo:

For five years, I was the only female on all my football teams. Those years were anything but ordinary. I faced many obstacles being a girl in what was considered a man’s sport.…When I was 18 years old, I was recognized as the first female to receive a football scholarship. A short 2 years later I had the honor of doing what every kid dreams about, scoring the winning points during a championship game. If you are determined and never quit, the places you’ll go will always be unimaginable!

Achtman reports receiving “a little bit of pushback” from parents before they read the book. One, she says, expressed concern that I was pushing an agenda. “But when you read the story,” she says, “I’m careful to focus on the strength, grace, and dedication dancing and sports require. It was very important to me and Andra to avoid any stereotypes with these characters. I wanted them to be representative of pursuing any dream regardless of background, gender, or orientation.”

Kirkus praises, “Pana’s full-color paintings ably capture the characters’ strength and passion.” Pana, an art teacher in Romania, was on maternity leave when she worked on the book. “I realized how important communication would be when she submitted her first illustrations,” Achtman says with a laugh. “They were not of American football, but of international futball—soccer.”

Sharing the book with students or with families in library and book fair settings has been gratifying, Achtman says. “This is just a story about growing up to follow your passion and be who you want to be. I have a great time reading it. Afterward, kids want to share their own stories and what they want to be when they grow up. The parents get excited, listening to their children. I encourage them to go to the back of the book, where they can write their own proudest-moment story.”

This begs the question: What is Achtman’s own proudest-moment story? She responds, “I became a second-grade teacher and decided to get my master’s. I was pregnant, but I have a lifelong love of learning and wanted to pursue furthering my education. It would be hard, balancing the two. I went to work, stayed up late, and attended weekend classes. I was able to graduate with my master’s with a 4.0 a few months before giving birth to my daughter.”

Achtman is a Michigan native and still lives in the city she grew up in, West Bloomfield. Her mother was a kindergarten teacher for more than two decades. In addition to her mother’s classroom, she loved going to the library. Mo Willems was a favorite author with his “relatable and silly” stories, as was Dr. Seuss with his impactful rhymes. She passed on her love of books to her children. “My daughter never slept with a stuffed animal,” she says with a laugh. “She slept with five or six hardcover books.”

Her love of storytelling was instilled in her by her grandfather and father, who would regale her with random stories in the car. Her father created a fantastical, imaginary character named Delilah, a witch, whose adventures and lessons connected with events in Achtman’s own life. “He’d start out by saying, ‘You’ll never believe what happened to me,’” she recalls. She wrote her first book, I Hope It’s a Puppy, as a gift for her daughter when she was expecting and her daughter was going to be a big sister.

Carrying on in the family tradition, Achtman, too, regales her children, ages 4 and 6 ½, with stories about Delilah. “I’ll come home from work and tell them, ‘Delilah told me this grand story.’ It is usually about things in their lives I want to help them through.”

Achtman reports that on the very day of this interview, her daughter told her she wanted to tell her a story about a rainbow cat. It was, she reflects, another proudest moment for her.

She hopes that readers of My Proudest Moment, no matter their ages, realize that their futures are boundless and feel inspired to pursue their dreams with hard work and dedication, no matter what others may think. “They might be the first, second, or third person to do something,” she says, “but that’s okay because they will be opening the doors for others.”

She encourages parents to have a follow-up conversation about what their children learned from the story and their thoughts about their own lives and dreams. “Sometimes we read a story and put it away,” she says, “but the conversation after a book is so important.”

Donald Liebenson is a Chicago-based writer who is published in theWashington Postand Town & Country and on vanityfair.com.