The 2023 Rainbow Book List from the American Library Association includes a record 190+ librarian-approved books with “significant and authentic” LGBTQIA+ content for children and teens. Let’s look at the books—and at some charts showing how such books have increased over the years!
Why This Matters
This year, the Rainbow Book List Committee of the American Library Association’s (ALA’s) Rainbow Round Table reviewed nearly 550 books published between July 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022, and selected more than 190 (by my count, 193) fiction and non-fiction books for toddlers through young adults, blowing away last year’s number of 122 and 2021’s 129.
Unlike the recently announced Stonewall Awards for children’s and young adult books, which recognize only a very few titles at the peak of excellence, the Rainbow Book List is a larger selection, intended to help librarians, educators, parents and others find “quality books with significant content” regarding LGBTQIA+ identities. This can help them develop their collections, advise readers, and ensure children and youth of all ages have access to such books. It offers the imprimatur of the oldest and largest library association in the world, which can help convince communities to keep these books on the shelves. Given the ongoing attempts to ban or restrict LGBTQ-inclusive books, that is more important than ever. As the committee noted in its post yesterday:
The importance of this list (and others like it) cannot be overstated, especially in a time when we are seeing a record number of efforts to ban both materials and support for LGBTQIA+ young people and their families. It is our hope that our efforts to identify appealing and high quality queer books for youth will help young people, librarians, educators, and caregivers of all kinds to connect our readers with information and stories that are critical to their well being and growth. The suppression of these books is a detriment to all youth, and we cannot ignore the damage these challenges are having on the young people in our society. We know that there are individuals who will try to censor these books, but we offer this carefully curated list to the multitude of youth advocates working in our communities to connect young readers to the books that they so desperately need. This collection of titles is an invitation for all readers to create a more welcoming future for everyone.
The Books
As they have done in previous years, the committee chose Top 10 Titles for Young Readers and Top 10 Titles for Teen Readers from the full list of 190+. Here are the ones for young readers (through middle grade)—click the titles to read my own reviews:
Picture Books
- Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle, by Nina LaCour, illustrated by Kaylani Juanita (Candlewick).
- Bathe the Cat, by Alice B. McGinty, illustrated by David Roberts (Chronicle Books).
- A Song for the Unsung: Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the 1963 March on Washington, by Carole Boston Weatherford and Rob Sanders, illustrated by Byron McCray (Henry Holt & Company.
Middle Grade
- Moonflower, by Kacen Callender (Scholastic).
- The Civil War of Amos Abernathy, by Michael Leali (HarperCollins).
- Tiger Honor, Yoon Ha Lee (Disney-Hyperion).
- Different Kinds of Fruit, by Kyle Lukoff (Dial).
- You Only Live Once, David Bravo, by Mark Oshiro (HarperCollins).
- Ellen Outside the Lines, by A. J. Sass (Little, Brown).
- Artie and the Wolf Moon, by Olivia Stephens (Graphic Universe).
Check out the complete list of titles to see the ones for teens (which I love but don’t typically cover here) and the full lists for all ages!
The Big Picture
Below are updated versions of two charts I created several years ago. The first shows the number of Rainbow Book List titles since the List’s founding in 2008. (The 2008 list covered books published between 2005-2007; each subsequent list covered the year and a half before the list’s publication.) Even this doesn’t fully show the sweeping change in LGBTQ-inclusive titles, though; several of the committee’s picture book picks in the earlier years, for example, had vague or allegorical queer content. Today’s books, on the whole, are more likely to show clearly queer characters. You’ll see the big leap starting with 2019’s list, which covered books published between July 2017 and December 2018.
The second chart shows the number of books the Committee evaluated each year before making their final selections. This chart starts in 2013, when the Committee began regularly reporting this data. Again, the past few years have seen a significant jump.
The fact that the committee still evaluates so many titles and selects a much smaller percentage, however (averaging 22 percent since 2013), speaks both to the growing number of LGBTQ-inclusive books being published and the fact that many of them still have a ways to go in terms of quality and “significant and authentic” LGBTQ content. Let’s hope that budding authors find ways of improving their skills and getting feedback on their drafts. I’ll also suggest that prospective authors read widely among existing LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books and other diverse children’s titles before embarking on efforts of their own.
Notes on method:
- This year’s Rainbow List separates Preschool and Early Elementary; I’ve counted them all as Picture Books to keep the chart consistent with previous years.
- In 2021, the Rainbow List broke out “Juvenile Fiction” into its own category; this year they call it “Upper Elementary.” I’ve kept these books with Middle Grade, again to keep the chart consistent across all years.
- Graphic/Manga includes both middle grade and YA titles, since the Rainbow List used to break both out into their own Graphic category but now doesn’t. I’ve done so to keep the chart consistent. I also counted Graphic/Manga series of more than one book as one, since this is how the Committee lists them.
- Slight differences in counting shouldn’t obscure the fact that the overall number of LGBTQ-inclusive books for kids and youth is skyrocketing.
- I’ve hand counted the number of titles from the Rainbow Book List website; I am not affiliated with the Committee and all errors in tabulation and charting are my own.
My own Mombian Database of LGBTQ Family Books, an ongoing endeavor, includes more titles with a wider range of quality, from excellent to less so (which I try to indicate), to help people who may come across any of the books and want some guidance, or be looking for representation that may only appear in a book whose literary or artistic quality doesn’t quite meet the Rainbow Book List’s standards. (I could debate a few titles I really liked that didn’t make their list, but I’m not going to argue about books with librarians.) My database also only includes children’s books up through middle grade (and books for grown-up LGBTQ parents); it doesn’t cover YA like the Rainbow list (since I’m only one person and have to sleep). The Rainbow List, though, offers the ALA’s imprimatur, vital for librarians and teachers making the case to include these books in schools. I’d like to think there’s a need for both approaches.
For a bit of history, here’s my interview with Nel Ward, chair of the Rainbow Book List Committee when it launched in 2008. It’s been a pleasure watching the number of titles grow and diversify over the years.
As always, many thanks to the librarians who put together the Rainbow Book List and to all of the librarians everywhere whose recommendations and support (often in the face of increasingly harsh opposition) continue to positively impact the lives of so many young people and families.
I hope you’ll also check out my previous post about this year’s American Library Association Youth Media Awards, which honored LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books (among others) in different ways.