I’m always happy when I find new authors who have written books featuring LGBT families. I’m also happy when I find strong straight allies of the LGBT community. Canadian Heather Jopling is both—though in fact, “ally” is too weak a term. She is the author of Ryan’s Mom is Tall, Monika’s Papa Is Tall, and The Not-So-Only Child, three books for young children published by her own Nickname Press. She is a straight, married, mother with one daughter, but has also been a surrogate for a gay male couple. Her husband has been a sperm donor for a pair of lesbian friends. Her husband’s mother is also a lesbian, though she came out after her son was grown. Jopling’s experiences motivated her to write her own books celebrating different types of families.
Ryan’s Mom Is Tall contrasts Ryan’s Mom and Mummy on facing pages. Ryan’s Mom is tall; his Mummy is short. One has curly hair; one has straight hair. His Mom does crossword puzzles, but his Mummy plays hockey. The one thing they have in common, though, the book concludes, is that they both love him very much. Monika’s Papa Is Tall is the parallel (though not quite identical) tale featuring a girl and her two dads.
They are simple but engaging stories, and seem designed to appeal to preschoolers and beginning readers. They convey a message about diversity without focusing on lesbian and gay families’ “difference.” This seems appropriate for the age group, when telling children their families are “different” might cause concerns that weren’t there to start.
My one criticism of these books is about a few of the illustrations by Allyson Demoe. The images are drawn as puzzle pieces, which come together on the last page, representing the various parts of a family. It’s a good concept, but leads to a few potentially disturbing (or at least, confusing) pictures when one of the parents has her or his head “cut off” by a puzzle notch.
Jopling’s third book, The Not-So-Only Child, illustrated by Lauren Page Russell, is drawn more directly from her life in the midst of a network of traditional and non-traditional family relations. The tale is told from the perspective of a young girl, Larissa, going through her family scrapbook. “This is my Mummy and Daddy,” she begins, and then goes on to introduce us to her various grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and the rest of her relatives, including the half-siblings from her mom’s surrogacy and dad’s sperm donation, her lesbian grandmas, her pets, and the close family friends whom she calls aunts. Larissa adds various asides that give us colorful details about everyone’s jobs, hobbies, and nicknames. “People seem sad when they find out I am an only child,” she says at the end, “Until I tell them the whole story. Then they’re not so sad anymore.” I wonder again if the reference to the sadness of being an only child (even if then denied) will worry children who haven’t before thought about it this way. Despite this qualm, I think The Not-So-Only Child is a sweet, much-needed tale showing the variety of family connections a person can have today.
All three of Jopling’s books are a positive addition to the small but growing library of volumes for and about LGBT and other diverse families. If you’d like to order them, you can do so directly from Nickname Press’ Web site. (They are not yet available through Amazon or other major booksellers.)
You can also read a piece the Ottawa Citizen ran last September, which tells even more about Jopling’s remarkable family and journey to parenthood, authorhood, and advocacy.