“What Should a Queer Children’s Book Do?” asks Jessica Winter today in the New Yorker. It’s a good question, which she carefully explores through the history of LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books and the ongoing attacks on them. The piece echoes much of what I’ve said about the genre over the years. Here are a few additional thoughts and further readings, if the topic intrigues you.
In her piece, Winter begins by sharing the story of her child bringing home Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah Brannen, and Winter’s surprise at learning that it wasn’t “about” being gay. She then notes the recent legislation like Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which restricts discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, before giving us a short history of LGBTQ-inclusive children’s literature and looking at what the recent bans (part of a long history of conservative outrage) may mean for the genre and its readers. She speaks with a number of authors of LGBTQ-inclusive books, including Brannen, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (And Tango Makes Three), Kyle Lukoff (When Aidan Became a Brother), and Jessica Love (Julián Is a Mermaid), as well as several scholars, to provide a good view of the past and current landscape and the threats these books face.
I particularly like that she notes the tension between books that are “about” being LGBTQ and have a didactic purpose, and the books that are meant simply to offer representation and show LGBTQ people in the fullness of their lives. I’ve been writing about for years about the need for more children’s books that simply have LGBTQ characters and don’t focus on their queerness or on showing people it’s “okay” to be queer (usually after a negative incident). This is the reason my Database of LGBTQ Family Books includes the “Incidental queerness” tag, to help readers find books that aren’t didactic and don’t problematize queerness. (There’s also a Character(s) w/bias or misunderstanding of LGBTQ tag to indicate books that depict negative comments or actions.) It’s a key reason activist and mom Alli Harper launched OurShelves, a book-box subscription service for diverse books, which particularly seeks “stories where there are LGBTQ families out and proud, but the storyline doesn’t have to be about whether we are legitimate or okay as people and families,” as she told me in an interview. (See also her piece “We Need Everyday Books With Families Like Ours.”) That’s not to say there’s not still a time and place for some children’s books “about” queerness or dealing with bias—but it’s been great to see a gradual increase in books that take the “incidental” approach.
Winter also quotes Lukoff on this topic, who posits a third type of book, “one that’s wholly about a character’s identity, but without that identity being a source of conflict,” such as his When Aidan Became a Brother. Lukoff, as always, makes an excellent point. I will further suggest a fourth type, a subset of the “incidental queerness” books: Books that are not wholly “about” a character’s identity but that also don’t completely ignore the identity’s impact on the character’s life. One example of this (as) is Lukoff’s own Max on the Farm, the third in his Call Me Max series. The book is about Max, a transgender boy, and his friend Theresa, a cisgender girl, on their school field trip to a farm. In two scenes, unknowing adults try to put Max with the girls for various activities, and Max and his teacher must gently take action to correct them—but those are a small part of the overall story, which is mostly about Max and Theresa’s exploration of the farm and their mild misadventures.
Another example is Sandor Katz and the Tiny Wild, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and June Jo Lee. This biography of food fermentation evangelist Katz is not “about” him being gay, but notes that he moved to Tennessee “to join a community of queer folks.” Contrast these with “incidental queerness” books like My Parents Won’t Stop Talking, by Emma Hunsinger and Tillie Walden (which Winter also mentions), where the parents’ sexual orientations and gender identities could be swapped for anything and the story would read the same. I’m not saying that one approach is better than the other; I think there are good reasons for both types of stories. Sometimes, there are universals of human experience and specific identities really don’t matter, such as in My Parents Won’t Stop Talking. Other times, there are differences that, although not the focus of a story, may impact a character’s response to something. Being aware of these different approaches may make us as readers and authors more thoughtful about which to choose and how to recognize and create authentic tales.
Winter’s piece is worth reading in full if you have any interest in LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books or diverse literature in general. I’m thrilled to see a mainstream publication like the New Yorker give space to the topic, especially with such books being under greater threat than ever.
For more on some of the books and trends Winter discusses, and my own interviews with some of the authors, see these posts:
- “LGBTQ-Inclusive Children’s Books: Trends and Tribulations”
- “’These Necessary Stories’ — 2022 Rainbow Book List Shows Increasing Diversity of Content and Authors” (Includes graphs showing the growth in LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books.)
- “How Parents, Students, and Others Are Fighting the Surge of Book Bans”
- “And Tango Makes Three Authors Reflect on New Wave of Book Bans”
- “New Edition Enlivens Heather Has Two Mommies for Families Today”
- “Heather’s Mommy Has Two New Books”
- “Celebrating Five Decades of Queer-Inclusive Books for Children and Youth”
- “This Year, Penguins, Next Year, Guinea Pigs?”
- “First Challenge to Uncle Bobby’s Wedding“ (I believe this post was the first mention of this challenge in LGBTQ media.)
