“Tango” Authors Discuss Their New Children’s Book

Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, authors of the famed LGBT children’s book And Tango Makes Three (and gay dads themselves), were kind enough to answer some questions about their latest book, Christian, the Hugging Lion, about which I posted more yesterday.

What attracted you to Christian’s story?

Justin: First there was that extremely moving video. And second there was the fact that the story begins with the creation of a very special family led by two “dads.” But if those were the elements that caught our attention, it was the arc of the story that made us want to adapt it for young children. The tale begins with a delightfully rambunctious lion cub with whom young children can identify. We watch him grow up under the care of two loving parents and, eventually, leave them to make his way in the outside world. He begins his own family, but his connection to his parents endures. We thought we could tell this story in a way that would speak at a deep level to children’s eagerness to grow up and to their concerns about separation.

In real life, John and Ace [the men who adopted Christian] are not partners (at least as far as I know), but you leave that rather ambiguous in the story. Was that intentional?

Peter: We don’t know what Ace and John’s relationship was at the time the story takes place. [John Rendall refers to a “then-girlfriend” of the time in this article.—DR] But it was clear to us from all of the accounts they gave that they functioned together as Christian’s main caregivers and main attachment figures. And so it seemed right to present the three of them as family. Not knowing more than that, we couldn’t specify their relationship further, but we were also were happy to leave it open to interpretation. Unlike Tango, in this story the fact that the parent figures are the same sex is not central to the tale. It’s there by the way. Maybe that captures a bit of our own experience as parents to our daughter. Yes, her fathers are gay. But for now at least, as a little person whose chief interests are love and food and play, for her that fact is very much by the way.

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