The Children’s Book with Gay Dads You Might Have Missed

It’s easy to miss the fact that one of the best recent children’s books featuring gay dads even includes them. Since this is also one of the best books of the past year, period, we should pay attention.

I bought my son Brian Selznick’s The Marvels on the strength of the author’s previous works, notably The Invention of Hugo Cabret (which won the Caldecott Medal) and Wonderstruck. “You either see it or you don’t,” is a phrase that echoes throughout the book, and while it has one meaning to the characters, might also reflect the quiet (but ultimately clear) inclusion of gay dads.

Like his previous works, this one blends a graphic telling of the story with text to weave a spellbinding tale. In The Marvels, we begin with Selznick’s signature pencil images telling the tale of a boy on a ship in 1766. We learn how he ends up in a London theatre and of the next few generations of his family. The story then breaks abruptly, to pick up in 1990 with the textual telling of another boy finding his way in the world.

I won’t say much more for fear of spoiling the book’s many surprises, except that there are gay dads, presented without remark, and there is a character with AIDS, also presented without remark. Selznick, who is himself gay, based part of the tale on the real-life story of Dennis Severs, a gay man living in London who died of AIDS. The book is not “about” being gay or having AIDS, however, except insofar as gay people and people with AIDS have lives and go about them. The Marvels is instead about the power of storytelling, how the stories we create can help us deal with loss, and the fine line between truth and fiction. The New York Times review of it doesn’t even mention there are gay characters. As Selznick told Entertainment Weekly:

It’s a story about people who fall in love and have a relationship and live together in a house and raise children. There are a lot of very mainstream ideas. I realized when I finished, the word “gay” doesn’t appear in the book; the word “homosexual” doesn’t appear in the book. It’s just stories about people who meet and fall in love and are there to support each other.

[The EW review is here, but I encourage you not to read it until you’ve read the book, as there are spoilers.]

I think it is a good sign that we’ve reached a point where children’s books with gay characters don’t have to be about their gayness. The Marvel’s isn’t the first—but Selznick’s renown means it’s likely to have a wider visibility than many others. Might Martin Scorsese make a film adaptation as he did with Hugo Cabret? We can only hope. (Personally, I see David Thewlis (Harry Potter’s Remus Lupin) in the role of Albert. Anyone else?)

On a side note: I am a huge fan of digital books, but when it comes to The Marvels, I heartily encourage everyone to read the print edition. The deep blue and gold cover, edged with gold, is a visual and tactile delight, and Selznick’s drawings beg for the kind of revisiting that is still easier with paper. Buy it for your kids (probably best for later elementary ages and up) and then read it yourself.

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