I have an interview with author Lesléa Newman coming out in my next newspaper column, so I’ll keep things short for now—but I was too excited about the news not to say something.
The new edition addresses the two things that always made me a little hesitant about the original. While I recognized Heather’s importance in providing representation of our families to children at a time when there wasn’t much, it never really resonated with me. The pictures (even in the colorized 20th anniversary edition) seemed dated by the mid-2000s, when my son was of an age to read it. More critically, the older version showed Heather crying when she first wonders if she is the only child at school without a daddy. I never wanted to discuss family difference with my son starting from a place of sadness and fear.
In this new rendition, brand-new full-color illustrations by Laura Cornell add a bright cheeriness, and hold their own with those of any other picture book today. And in the revised story, Heather merely wonders if she’s the only one without a daddy—no crying—before the teacher sweeps the whole class up into a joyous exploration of their families.
Heather wasn’t the first picture book to show lesbian moms. That honor belongs to Jane Severance’s 1979 book When Megan Went Away, which shows a young girl dealing with the fact that her mother’s partner has moved out. (For more background on Megan, see my earlier post.) Heather shows a happy, intact two-mom family, though—an arguably edgier proposition—and took off with LGBTQ families and in popular culture in a way Severance’s didn’t. The new edition makes it likely Heather will continue to delight children of LGBTQ parents—and their friends and classmates—for years to come.
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