Purim Children’s Book Features Gay Dads

It’s Purim, a Jewish holiday of storytelling and costumes that commemorates the deliverance of the Jews in the Persian Empire from a plot to destroy them. It’s also the only Jewish holiday to have a picture book featuring a child with gay dads.

I wrote about Elisabeth Kushner’s The Purim Superhero when it first came out a couple of years ago, but it’s worth a reminder. The charming book is about trying to remain true to oneself in the face of expectations and peer pressure. The protagonist, a boy named Nate, wants to dress up as an alien for Purim, but has doubts when he learns all of the other boys at his Hebrew school will be dressing up as superheroes. He asks his dads for advice, and they tell him, “Not all boys have to be the same thing.” Nate’s solution to the problem is original, yet feels like something a real boy would do.

I love that Kushner avoids trying too hard to prove that gay families are just like any others. She celebrates difference rather than touting sameness—while at the same time, depicting a two-dad family as an accepted part of a deep religious and cultural tradition. That’s important. With few exceptions, LGBTQ-inclusive picture books have largely shown culturally and religiously neutral families. Diversity of color has started to appear, but even those books don’t often explore the families’ various cultural and religious connections.

In my earlier post, I quoted Kushner as saying, “Purim is very much about ‘coming out’ as yourself—[Queen] Esther is a great example of someone who comes out of the closet for a good cause. [To save her people.]” Kushner’s not the only one to see the parallel—over at Keshet, Sarah Young has just written a post on how she sees the holiday as an allegory for coming out, and how the ancient story matches up with a modern tale.

Whether you’re celebrating Purim or not, spare a moment today to think about what tales you’d tell from your traditions if you were writing a children’s book. Then, whether you’re a book writer or not, tell them to your kids