Cricket Media, publisher of a range of award-winning children’s magazines, is offering two free stories from its magazines for Pride Month, each featuring a two-mom family. And both the venerable Highlights magazines and the newer Kazoo are celebrating Pride in various ways as well.
Cricket’s offerings are:
- “Pumpkin Planting,” from this past April’s issue of LADYBUG magazine, is for readers three to six years old. In the story by Krista Curran, with illustrations by Sally Springer, we see toddler Emmy excited about planing a garden, especially tiny pumpkins, with her Mom and Mama. (All are White.) There are messages about growing fruits and vegetables, planning, working together, and having patience.
- “The Very, Very, Very Long Hike,” by Debbie Urbanski and illustrated by Dave Szalay, comes from the April 2018 SPIDER magazine, for children ages six to nine. It features a multiracial family with two moms and two kids. Their youngest, Edun, worries she will be bored on a long family hike to a remote cabin. Her moms manage to spark her imagination, however, and eventually Edun inspires them all. I wrote about this story when it was first published, and spoke with a couple of Cricket’s then-editors about both the piece’s origins and their LGBTQ-inclusive content more generally.
In a blog post about these two pieces, Cricket’s director of editorial, Jim O’Connor, notes, “Each child, and each child’s family, is a part of the world and shares in the experiences all families share. We don’t advocate for a particular identity or family structure—we want kids to see that families of all configurations can be safe and nurturing, both their own and others.”
Cricket Media isn’t the only children’s magazine publisher to be celebrating Pride. Kazoo, founded by publishing veteran and lesbian mom Erin Bried, had a booth at Brooklyn Pride earlier this month. They also offered the glitter-filled tweet below. I interviewed Bried last year about her inclusive approach to content; mentioned Kazoo’s “Action” issue last October (and gave a sneak peek of its fun hidden-object puzzle set at a “march for love”) and cheered heartily when Kazoo won the prestigious National Magazine Award this past March, the first children’s magazine to do so.
This month (and every month), we celebrate lgbtq kids & families. ????While other kids magazines shy away from inclusivity, or make it seem controversial, we make room for everyone. We love our little Noisemakers, however they may be, & we know #lovealwayswins. #HappyPride pic.twitter.com/ya2wX0lvQ7
— Kazoo Magazine (@Kazoomagazine) June 1, 2019
Highlights, which like Cricket Media, publishes a variety of children’s magazines for all ages, had to be prodded into LGBTQ inclusion a few years back, but this year also tweeted out a happy Pride message and linked to a post they’d published last year about books that celebrate a variety of family types and identities, including LGBTQ ones. They also this week issued a strong statement against the U.S. government’s practice of separating immigrant children from their families—not a queer-specific issue, but one that we should care deeply about as parents and as people.
June is #PrideMonth! Celebrate with these books to help your kids understand that while differences exist, we are all actually more alike than different ?? https://t.co/kaveUHqgWr
— Highlights (@Highlights) June 4, 2019
Thanks to all of the children’s publishers, of books and magazines, who are celebrating Pride with us and making our shelves more inclusive all year round.