Don’t Miss This Picture Book Featuring a Child and Their Queer Grandfathers

Sometimes a picture book knocks everything out of the park. Evocative prose, whimsical illustrations, a sweet storyline that deals with sensitive topics by applying a big dose of family love—plus a gender ambiguous protagonist with two grandfathers who are a couple. I almost missed this book because the grandfathers’ relationship is so seamlessly woven into the story that the cataloging information has no indication there are LGBTQ characters. This is one picture book that shouldn’t be skipped, however.

A Plan for Pops, by Heather Smith and Brooke Kerrigan (Orca Books), is the story of Lou, an overall-clad child with boundless energy who visits Grandad and Pops every Saturday. Smith and Kerrigan share the gentle rhythm of their weekend routine, from breakfast with their favorite foods to a trip out to the local library. Grandad likes to read about how things are made; Pops likes to reminisce about when he used to “shake, rattle, and roll.” In the afternoons, Lou builds things with Grandad. One of their creations is a Rube Goldberg-style contraption that releases a burst of paper cranes to surprise and delight Pops.

One Saturday, however, Pops falls. It’s a mostly off-screen incident and we don’t learn details. Afterwards, however, Lou learns that Pops will need a wheelchair, “Not just for now, but for always.” Pops stays in his room for weeks; adult readers may surmise that he has depression. Lou and Grandad worry about him. Finally, Lou concocts a plan to motivate Pops to leave his room. I’ll leave the details for readers to discover; suffice it to say the plan works, and readers are left reassured that although some things have changed for Lou, Grandad, and Pops, they will continue to have many joyous weekends together.

The prose throughout is lovely and spare, with an occasional, well-put flourish (spaghetti with hot sauce “tastes like fireworks”). It neither over-explains nor leaves the reader wondering what is happening—a balance that some children’s books struggle to find. The illustrations, by Kerrigan, don’t just illustrate the text, but add to the story as they often show the characters’ emotions without words. There are also lots of wonderful details throughout, from Lou’s colorful (and sometimes missing) socks, to the grandfather’s quietly inquisitive dog. It is fitting that both Kerrigan and Smith have equal credit on the cover, rather than giving Kerrigan only “illustrated by” credit, which often gets omitted in reviews and discussion.

Lou’s gender is unspecified and Lou’s clothing androgynous; one use of “their” might refer to Lou or to Lou and Grandad, so it’s hard to tell what Lou’s own choice of pronouns might be. Readers can interpret Lou any way they wish, however, which is part of the beauty of this tale. Lou and Pops appear White; Grandad has darker skin and might be Black.

Notably, too, the grandparents are a couple. According to SAGE USA, there are going to be seven million LGBT older adults at least 65 years old by 2030. Given the number of LGBTQ parents today, it’s easy to see that many LGBTQ elders will likely be (or already are) grandparents. There are, however, only four other picture books I am aware of that feature queer grandparents. One is The Not-So-Only Child, by Heather Jopling, which includes two grandmothers who are a couple among a showcase of other family members. Another is Little Pig Saves the Ship, by David Hyde Costello (Charlesbridge). In that book, though, Grandpa and Poppy come over to visit Little Pig, rather than Little Pig visiting them, so it’s not really clear whether they are a couple or are just Little Pig’s grandfathers from the maternal and paternal sides of his family. Also, most of the story is about Little Pig’s interactions with Poppy alone; the two grandparents don’t really interact with each other. (Costello confirmed in a 2017 radio interview that they were intended to be a couple, however.) Thirdly is The Last Place You Look, by j wallace skelton, with illustrations by Justin Alves. Available from micro-press Flamingo Rampant, it tells of two lesbian bubbies (grandmothers) hosting a Passover seder for their grandchildren and other family members. Finally, the 1996 Amy Asks a Question: Grandma, What’s a Lesbian?, by real-life partners and grandmothers Jeanne Arnold and Barbara Lindquist (Mother Courage Press), talks about the “handfasting” ceremony the women had and how they would like to get legally married if they could.

I love that none of the above books are “about” the grandparents being a same-sex couple. The closest we get to anything overtly queer in A Plan for Pops is that at one point, Pops wears a shirt with a rainbow on it. As I’ve said many times before, we need more books like this, which show LGBTQ families simply as part of a wider world (and I’m happy that a number have been published in the past couple of years). As I’ve also said, however, there’s a catch-22 between treating queerness as an everyday thing and having those books be invisible to those specifically seeking LGBTQ-inclusive titles. For example, the publisher’s website clearly tags A Plan for Pops as having LGBTQ content—but the Library of Congress cataloging information is as follows:

LC Subjects

Families–Juvenile fiction.
Grandparents–Juvenile fiction.
Families–Fiction.
Grandparents–Fiction.

Other Subjects

JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Special Needs.
JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Multigenerational.
JUVENILE FICTION / Health & Daily Living / Diseases, Illnesses & Injuries.

Nowhere is there any indication there are queer characters. To some extent, that’s appropriate, of course, since their queer identities don’t form any part of the plot. Also, it means queer-inclusive books may be picked up and read by those who might not do so if they knew there were queer characters. That can be mind expanding. But books like this may fly under the radar of those specifically seeking queer inclusion (even librarians) unless we make a concerted effort to talk it up. (And while I love the American Library Association’s Rainbow Book List, a great resource for librarians and others to discover LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books, it only comes out once a year.)

A Plan for Pops is a marvelous book on many, many levels and deserves a wide readership. Pick it up for your children, grandchildren, grandparents, or others in your lives, and recommend it to all the children’s librarians you know. (It is also available in a French version, Une idée pour Papi.)

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