Updated Children’s Book Classic Now Includes Same-Sex Parents

(Originally published in my Mombian newspaper column.)

Forty years ago, a children’s book broke new ground in its depiction of a wide range of family diversity. Now it’s getting an update that includes even more variety—including families with same-sex parents.

Norma Simon’s All Kinds of Families was first published in 1976, one of the first widely available picture books to show not only White, mom-dad households but also families of color, adoptive families, single-parent families, families with divorced parents, and families in urban, suburban, and rural settings. Simon, who now has over 50 children’s books to her credit, told me in a phone interview that such diversity “hadn’t been explored” before in children’s books.

The “reader” textbooks for children at the time, she said, “always had the blonde children with the picket fence and the barn and the pony.” In 1965, however, Bank Street College in New York put out the Bank Street Reader, the first multi-ethnic reading textbook that showed an urban setting. Bank Street later produced a set of similarly diverse materials for the federal Head Start program, and Simon, who has a master’s degree from Bank Street, was one of the editors. “It made me very conscious of having different kinds of people in the books.” Her work with Bank Street, she said, “gave me eyes with which to see the world.”

[pullquote]Children could look at it and see themselves, and say, ‘Just like me’—that their family was included.[/pullquote]She used those eyes to craft All Kinds of Families. “If I was going to write a book,” she decided, “it had to include all the people that I cared about.” Her goal was that “Children could look at it and see themselves, and say, ‘Just like me’—that their family was included. Children didn’t see Black faces, they didn’t see many Asians, and certainly not Muslims, in children’s books, and so we made sure that in our book, we had all those people.”

When the book came out in 1976 with “absolutely wonderful” illustrations by Joe Lasker, it got “a very nice response,” she recalled—a response that has continued. “I am just overwhelmed with gratitude that the book kept selling all these years,” she said. She commends her publisher, Albert Whitman and Company, and its editors, who “were very bold in doing these books.”

When the publisher approached Simon about a 40th anniversary edition, she “immediately” knew she wanted to include same-sex parents. She lives on Cape Cod, near Provincetown, which has a large population of same-sex parents and their families. “I realized I could make a difference by making them part of my books,” she asserted.

She said that the goal for the new edition was to “make it look more like the world that children live in today.” In the first version, “I suggested that there were different compositions to families, but I could not be explicit, as I was in this second version. The world has changed fantastically.” (In the interim, she did include a two-mom family in her 2003 All Families Are Special.)

When asked what she would say to those who might object to a children’s book that shows same-sex parents, she replied, “Nobody makes you read it to them. And if the teacher reads it, or the librarian, then you can discuss it with them. But reading books is a matter of choice.”

The original illustrations have been updated with new, brighter watercolors by Sarah Brannen, which similarly show a wide range of ethnic, racial, and geographic diversity, as well as families with members in uniform, with disabilities, and of many ages. Hairstyles and clothing have been brought up to date.

Astute readers will recognize Brannen from her own 2008 book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, about a young, anthropomorphic guinea pig who worries that her favorite uncle won’t have time to play with her after he marries his boyfriend. Brannen told me she was “honored” to be asked to illustrate the new All Kinds of Families. She explained, “This book was very important in 1976, when there were very few books for young children that showed anything other than families with a mom, dad, and kids. Although many, many children were living in other kinds of families by then, it took a while for picture books to reflect that. And it’s still important—kids like to see families like their own in picture books.”

In the new illustrations, Brannen sought “to show as many different kinds of families as I could,” she said. “It was wonderful to add same-sex-parented families.”

As in the original, the new text and images also stress the cycles and celebrations of family life, with images of weddings, moving to a new home, and the arrival of a new baby by birth or adoption. A couple of pages also show sadder moments—one with a family gathered at a cemetery, and another with a mother in a hospital bed, wearing a kerchief that implies cancer treatments. These are moments, however, that help define us as family.

Additionally, and satisfyingly, the book emphasizes the importance of storytelling as a family treasure and bond. It will likely engender stories from the families that read it as they share the ways they are similar to, and different from, the many depicted in the book.

The new edition thus builds on a classic but feels fresher and more relevant to today’s families. Simon observed, however, that one of her original goals remains: “The thing that kids need is love, attention, consistency, and the feeling that people really care about them. That hasn’t changed in 40 years. That was important for me to express.”

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