2010 Rainbow Bibliography Highlights LGBT Books for Kids

(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.)

The American Library Association’s Rainbow Project has just published its third annual Rainbow Bibliography, a list of recommended, LGBT-inclusive books for readers under age 18.

Nel Ward, head of the Rainbow Project, says one of the biggest problems librarians have with including LGBT-inclusive books in their collections is that they don’t know what to buy. The Bibliography is designed to help them select a range of appropriate, quality publications.

LGBT book-award programs, such as the Lambda Literary Awards or the ALA’s own Stonewall Book Awards, “highlight just the very, very best,” Ward noted in an interview. In contrast, the Rainbow Bibliography takes a broader view. “There’s just a lot of good reading out there, some with literary merit, some genre stuff, that doesn’t see the light of day or is in hiding,” she explained. “Once you’ve bought the top two, three, four on a list, where do you go from there?”

The Rainbow Bibliography is not a catch-all of books with LGBT content, however. Ward said that she and her committee of eight ALA members looked at almost 150 books, nominated 64, and selected 46 for the final list. Works published between July 2008 and October 2009 were eligible. In order to be considered, books needed to have significant LGBT content, be accessible to readers under age 18, and be of sufficient quality.

The committee took a loose interpretation of LGBT content with respect to some of the picture books on the list. Several have what Ward called “implicit” content. “They don’t come out and say, ‘Oh yes, I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay,’” she said. “What we did was say, ‘Does this look like a [same-sex] family? Does this look like a couple?’ . . . Or does this look like prejudice that could be compared to GLBT prejudice?” In the case of Lynne Rickards’ Pink!, about a pink penguin who tries to live with flamingos when he is rejected at home, one of the committee members reported that a reader came into her library and said she didn’t want the book because it was gay—even though it is not explicitly so. That was enough to bring it to the committee’s attention.

The Rainbow Project gave special commendation to two board books for toddlers, both with more obvious LGBT content: Mommy, Mama, and Me and Daddy, Papa, and Me, by Lesléa Newman, author of the classic Heather Has Two Mommies, one of the first LGBT-inclusive children’s books.

The committee also cited four other works for “exceptional quality and impact”: How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity, a collection for teens edited by Michael Cart; Ash, by Malinda Lo, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist; Into the Beautiful North, by Luis Alberto Urrea, about three young women and their gay friend seeking to protect their Mexican town; and Finlater, by Shawn Stewart Ruff, the story of two teens who fall in love and must deal with homophobia and racial tension in the 1970’s.

Ward, in an interview, also highlighted two of the books with transgender characters. One is the fictional Almost Perfect, by Brian Katcher, about a boy who falls in love with a girl and finds out she’s transgender. “It’s very nicely done,” she said, “and it shows the difficulty on both sides of dealing with this situation.”

The other is Mara Drummond’s Transitions – A Guide To Transitioning for Transsexuals and Their Families. Although it is not aimed at youth per se, Ward said she thinks it will be of use to students in middle school and beyond. She relates that in Portland, Oregon, near her home, there have been newspaper articles about two ministers and a high school teacher who made gender transitions and remained in their positions. “These are people that young people will then need to know information about,” she observed. “I think [Transitions] will provide them good information about why they [transition]. It’s not clinical. It’s just very, very straightforward material.”

Ward noted that although there are also several other non-fiction works on the list, none were written specifically for children and young adults, a gap she hopes some authors and publishers will remedy.

One of the difficulties of creating the list, Ward said, is that the cataloguing headings assigned to books by the Library of Congress do not always indicate LGBT content. The lack of appropriate subject headings meant that at least one book—Alison Goodman’s Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, which has both a crossdressing character and a transgender one—was missed by the committee until after its October 2009 deadline. The good thing is, Ward noted, that a sequel is due out this fall, and should be a candidate for a future Rainbow Bibliography.

Although there is much overlap between the Rainbow Bibliography and the ALA’s list of the most frequently banned and challenged books, Ward said feedback about the Bibliography has been overwhelmingly positive, both from librarians and children. Youth are posting to online social networks “about how grateful they are to get these books,” she said. Gay-straight alliances and other diversity programs are also using it as a core list for their work.

Ward is now stepping down as head of the Rainbow Project, although she will remain on the committee. She will instead be heading up a new ALA venture to create an offshoot of the Rainbow Bibliography for adults.

LGBT youth and children of LGBT parents don’t have to wait for a list aimed at them, however. The entire Rainbow Bibliography is available online at the Rainbow Project Web site.

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