Trivia Question: What Was the First Children’s Book in the U.S. to Feature Lesbian Moms?

Lesbian mom trivia question: What was the first children’s book in the U.S. to feature lesbian moms? Hint: It’s probably not what you think.

The answer is Jane Severance’s 1979 book When Megan Went Away (and not, as many might guess, Lesléa Newman’s more well-known Heather Has Two Mommies, first published in 1989). When Megan Went Away, illustrated by Tea Schook, shows a young girl dealing with the fact that her mother’s partner has moved out. Unlike Newman’s 1993 Saturday Is Pattyday, also about a girl with parents who have separated, “the child is not expected to see her mother’s partner again,” as Jaime Campbell Naidoo observed in his Rainbow Family Collections guide for librarians. What a difference 14 years makes.

When Megan Went Away is now out of print. It was published by the feminist book-publishing collective Lollipop Power Press, based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The collective was dedicated to producing non-sexist, non-racist children’s books, including Jesse’s Dream Skirt, by Bruce Mack, about a boy who wants to wear a skirt, and Margrit Eichler’s Martin’s Father, about a single Black dad raising his son. It also published Severance’s 1983 Lots of Mommies, about a girl who lives with her mother and three other women, whom she also considers her mothers.

According to 1970s North Carolina Feminisms, a 2011 undergraduate women’s studies project at Duke University:

During the time that the collective operated, women met weekly in each others’ homes. . . . For the first several years, the collective was made up strictly of volunteers.  During this time, they selected three to five stories a year to publish, out of the hundreds that were submitted (they received 20-30 each week).  After their fifth or sixth year, the women all chipped in to buy a printing press. . . . Lollipop Power Press published between 30 and 50 books in total.

A true feminist collective, Lollipop Power reached women all over the country.  Women from all over the country sent in scripts to Lollipop Power. . . .

WUNC did an interview with three of its founding members, Elizabeth Brownrigg, Marjorie Fowler, and Kathleen Gallagher, last February. There’s a brief exchange at about 13:50 regarding the press’ role in pioneering lesbian and gay themes in children’s books. Lollipop Power was bought by Carolina Wren Press in 1986.

The next time you open an LGBT-inclusive children’s book, therefore, give a thought to the brave and resourceful writers and publishers who led the way, nearly 35 years ago.