It’s been 25 years since a picture book (the classic Daddy’s Roommate) has shown a child with a divorced mom and dad, whose dad is dating another man. A new picture book brings us an updated take on the theme, with a story about a girl whose mom and dad are working together with the dad’s new partner, Harry, to ensure she’s cared for—and that she gets the occasional happy surprise.
Tuesday Is Daddy’s Day, by Elliot Kreloff (Holiday House), opens as a young brown-skinned girl explains that she’s lucky—she has a blue room at her mommy’s house and a pink room at her daddy’s house. On certain days, she stays with her mommy (also brown-skinned); on others, she stays with Dad and Harry (both White), and clearly has a different routine with each. Her stuffed animal comes with her to both locations, though, offering comfort and continuity. Harry’s relationship with her daddy is never explained, but the two men are shown making dinner together and standing close while shopping.
One Tuesday, however, the girl’s mommy comes to pick her up at school—but Tuesday is Daddy’s day! Mommy explains that Daddy had something special to do, and that she’ll take the girl over to his house. The girl gets angry and says she wants Daddy. Her mommy cajoles her into going along, although the girl wonders what happened to her daddy. Did he get kidnapped by pirates? Or taken by aliens? She asks Mommy, who says it’s a surprise. “I don’t like surprises. I like everything to stay exactly the way it’s supposed to be,” the girl replies, which is a perfectly understandable response from a child whose parents have divorced.
At Daddy’s house, only Harry is home. The girl is still cranky and goes to her room. Finally, her dad knocks on the door and says he has a surprise, causing the girl to shout again, “I don’t like surprises!” But the surprise (spoiler alert!) is a new puppy, who soon wins her over. Mommy stays for dinner, and Harry makes the girl’s favorite dish, which she previously only got at Mommy’s house. A page at the end offers tips on caring for a new puppy.
This is a sweet story about a family working together in the best interests of the child, even after a divorce. Even Harry, the newest member of the family, is trying to adjust his cooking to suit. The fact that the dad is in a relationship with another man is a complete non-issue—the story would have worked just as well if he was in a relationship with someone of any gender.
Contrast this approach with one of the earliest children’s books to depict LGBTQ parents, Michael Willhoite’s Daddy’s Roommate (1990). That story focused on who Daddy’s roommate was and how the two men lived, worked, ate, slept, and shaved together. The boy protagonist says that his mother told him his dad and roommate were gay. He didn’t know what this meant, so she explained that it’s “one more kind of love.” The book is positive and upbeat, and holds an important place as one of few books depicting a gay dad at the time, but feels somewhat dated now in its use of the term “roommate” and in the careful emphasis on all the everyday things the two men do together, as if to stress that they’re just like any other couple.
Despite the vastly increased number of LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books in the past couple of decades, though, there are still precious few that show a child with divorced parents. (Interestingly, though, the very first book in English to show any LGBTQ parent, Jane Severance’s When Megan Went Away (1979), is about a girl struggling with the separation of her mother and the woman who was her mother’s partner.) There are even fewer that show a child with divorced different-sex parents, one of whom now has a same-sex partner. Aside from Daddy’s Roommate, the only other ones I know of are the 1996 Zack’s Story: Growing Up With Same-Sex Parents, which also feels a little dated, and the 2016 Love Is What Makes Us a Family, a self-published book that is earnest but a little rough around the edges. In both of those it is the mom who is queer, however. Kudo to Kreloff for finding a need and giving us a fresh take on the topic.
