Baking, cooking competitions, family recipes, and a little bit of magic—these terrific recent LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books will get you and your kids in the mood for the latest season of the Great British Bake Off. Several even include recipes!
Click images or titles for full reviews! Happy reading (and baking)!
Middle Grade
Let’s start with an obvious one: David Atherton’s Baking Book for Kids: Delicious Recipes for Budding Bakers, by David Atherton, the gay, 2019 winner of The Great British Bake Off, and illustrated by Harry Woodgate, author/illustrator of the award-winning Grandad’s Camper, about a girl and her queer grandpa. This is a delightful cookbook geared for kids (though some adult guidance may be necessary), with fun recipes like like Hot Cross Hedgehogs and Iced Bear Buns (no actual hedgehogs or bears involved). Woodgate’s illustrations show ingredients, tools, and techniques for each of the baking steps, and also give us images of children baking, eating, and playing across the pages. Several are of ambiguous gender, and there are at least two who read as assigned male at birth who are wearing skirts or dresses. Alternatively, they could be read as short-haired girls or nonbinary kids. It’s a nice bit of effortless inclusion no matter what.
You may also want to check out Atherton’s Bake, Make & Learn to Cook: Fun and Healthy Recipes for Young Cooks and his Bake, Make & Learn to Cook Vegetarian: Healthy and Green Recipes for Young Cooks.
Just a Pinch of Magic, by Alechia Dow (Feiwel & Friends). A sweet and satisfying modern fantasy novel about two very different girls, Wini and Kal, who each feel like outsiders, but who must unite to try and save their magical town from a spell gone awry—and maybe get their dads to date in the process. Dow gives us the action and thrill of classic fantasy tales, with magical objects, haunted woods, and evil ghosts, but also looks thoughtfully at each girl’s struggle to find her place, weaving in a powerful but not pedantic theme about the power of love and family. The richly imagined world has a depth and originality that rivals that of many other stories about magical enclaves. (I’m looking at you, Harry.) Several actual baking recipes are included throughout the book—Dow is a former pastry chef, so you know they’ll be good. A tasty treat. (Out 10/10/23, but available for preorder.)
Basil and Oregano, by Melissa Capriglione (Dark Horse). Basil Eyres, who has two dads, is a young witch starting her senior year at the Porta Bella Magiculinary Academy. Arabella (“Bella”) Oregano is joining the school after having studied abroad. She’s the daughter of an acclaimed magiculinary chef who expects her to excel. Basil, however, must maintain her status as top student or lose the scholarship that she needs to stay. But Basil and Oregano are instantly smitten with each other even as they work to prove themselves. The two are also paired for the school’s Senior Festival, a cooking competition. But is Arabella hiding a secret that could endanger their chance for success and Basil’s future? A sweet, fun graphic novel with a refreshingly uncomplicated queer romance and plenty of additional queer representation.
Eli Over Easy, by Phil Stamper (HarperCollins). A thoughtful novel about grief, change, and moving forward. Thirteen-year-old Eli and his family moved from their small Minnesota town to New York City because his mom got a new job as a test kitchen chef—but then she died of COVID, so Eli and his dad are living by themselves in a small apartment in a big, unfamiliar city. As Eli grapples with grief and loneliness, he finds some old cooking videos of his mom. With the encouragement of a neighbor boy, Matthias (Mat), he begins to teach himself the recipes, though his overprotective dad worries that his absorption is keeping him mired in his grief. Eli has to show his dad that cooking is actually helping him, and that the shared food memories might even help his dad as well. The relationship between Eli and Mat also deepens into a crush, and the slow, gentle building of their relationship is just lovely. An uplifting but not pollyannish tale about resilience and growth. (Out 10/3/23, but available for preorder.)
The Gingerbread Witch and The Unsleeping Witch, by Alexandra Overy (Inkyard). Maud has grown up in a house made of gingerbread and sugar, crafted by Mother Agatha. Maud herself is made of gingerbread, too, but unlike Mother Agatha’s other creations, like a talking hazelnut mousse squirrel or a bird with spun-sugar feathers, Maud looks like a human. She is also a witch, though Mother Agatha has yet to teach her any spells. Witch hunters endanger them in the first volume, setting Maud off on an action-packed quest for a magical object in this fairy-tale inspired but wholly original world. In the second volume, Maud ventures out to help a friend, encountering evil witches, a dragon library, enchanted gummy snakes, exploding jelly beans, and more. Queer characters are seamlessly woven into the enchanting narratives.
Picture Book
Pride and Joy: A Story about Becoming an LGBTQIA+ Ally, by Frank J. Sileo and Kate Lum-Potvin, illustrated by Emmi Smid (Jessica Kingsley). When Joy’s beloved brother Noah and his boyfriend Miguel are harassed for being gay, Joy feels angry and scared. She wants to do something, but isn’t sure how, until she enlists the aid of several friends in creating a bake sale for the Teen Center. A helpful picture book about the increasingly important topic of being an ally in the face of anti-LGBTQ harassment.
Want even more LGBTQ-inclusive, baking-themed books? See my earlier roundup—which also takes a look at the connections between baking and LGBTQ rights!