Here are four great new LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books: an allegorical tale about a transgender girl; a sweet story with a gentle STEM lesson; the third in a delightfully funny early chapter book series, and a middle-grade book of trailblazers, including two queer ones.
Note that Me and My Dysphoria Monster comes out tomorrow; Kid Trailblazers comes out August 23, and The Blanket Where Violet Sits and Popcorn Bob 3: In America come out August 30. All are available for preorder. Click the links for details and full reviews!
Me and My Dysphoria Monster, by Laura Kate Dale, illustrated by Hui Qing Ang (Jessica Kingsley Publishers). In this allegorical tale, a child named Nisha introduces us to her monster, which follows her everywhere. Every time someone calls her a boy or tells her to use the boys’ bathroom, it gets bigger, until it is an enormous black cloud. One day, however, Nisha’s dad introduces her to Jack, a trans man who has a monster just like hers, and who shows her how to shrink it back down. The concept of an older trans mentor is important, and I also love the book’s concluding line, “And in time, I grew up to become the happy, smiling woman I always wanted to be.” It offers trans children something perhaps too rarely seen but much needed: a vision of themselves as happy adults, living as the gender they know themselves to be.
The Blanket Where Violet Sits, by Allan Wolf, illustrated by Lauren Tobia (Candlewick Press). “This is the blanket where Violet sits, eating a sandwich, an apple, and chips.” From that humble, small beginning, the perspective and the cumulative rhymes spiral out to encompass the park where Violet sits (with her two parents), the city it is in, the “tiny blue planet” that it is on, then the solar system, the galaxy, galactic clusters, and the universe. Violet peers upwards through her telescope at it all, guided by a book about space. She imagines another Violet far out in the universe, looking back at us, as the perspective slides back down to our planet, the park, and the blanket where the parents tuck a now-sleepy Violet under her blanket. One parent is of ambiguous gender; the other has a small beard and reads as male. Absolutely lovely, with a gentle message about our place in the universe—both a STEM lesson and a poetic one. (Click through for my pro tip on stargazing; I was an astronomy major in college.)
Popcorn Bob 3: In America, by Maranke Rinck and illustrated by Martijn Van Der Linden (Levine Querido). This is the third fun and fantastical early chapter book about a girl in Holland and a piece of popcorn that comes to life. The girl has two dads, but that’s happily incidental to the tale. In this volume, Ellis, her dads, and her friend Dante are all visiting the U.S. The dads think they’re going to work on marketing ideas for a farmer there, but Ellis and Dante are secretly trying to reunite Bob with other living kernels created by the same U.S. company whose illegal formula created him. Hijinks ensue. This is best read after the first two books, Popcorn Bob, and Popcorn Bob 2: The Popcorn Spy, but is a fun and worthwhile addition to the series. As I said about the first two volumes, there’s a sort of inspired silliness here, and a narrative pace that keeps the action moving. Van der Linden’s pencil drawings, which sometimes carry bits of dialog, also make this a great transition book for children not quite ready for all-text middle grade books (or who simply enjoy the hybrid text/graphic format). It would also make a fun read-aloud for slightly younger children.
Kid Trailblazers: True Tales of Childhood from Changemakers and Leaders, by Robin Stevenson, illustrated by Allison Steinfeld (Quirk Books). This is not a queer-specific book, but just like Stevenson’s Kid Activists and Kid Innovators volumes in the middle-grade Kid Legends series, it includes queer people in its 16 short biographies. In each profile of roughly eight to 10 pages, we learn about people who have led the way in the categories of Standing Up for Democracy, Fighting for Black Lives, Protecting Our Planet, and Harnessing the Power of Art, with an emphasis on how their childhoods shaped them. Several are still teens. In accessible but never patronizing prose, Stevenson sketches her subjects’ childhoods and later impact, deftly setting the scene for each one and providing informative details, engaging quotes, and sometimes humorous anecdotes. Three LGBTQ people are among those profiled: Elliot Page, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors. Click through for details.