The next volume in one of my favorite middle grade series is out today, about a large, chaotic family that happens to have many queer people in it! But large, queer-inclusive families actually star in a number of great books, including several series, so I’m rounding them up for you!
I come from a fairly small family myself. I only have one sibling, and my spouse and I have one child. But I love these stories of big families not only because they offer me a window into another type of family, but because they also stress the things that make a family a family—love, care, and commitment—no matter the size.
Click titles or images for full reviews of each volume!
The Swifts
Mix an Agatha Christie manor-house mystery with the wordplay of Norton Juster’s classic The Phantom Tollbooth, stir in the sisterly adventures of Little Women, a heap of Lemony Snicket gothic creepiness, and season with a queer sprinkle, and you might come up with something like The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels (Dutton), by Beth Lincoln, with delightful illustrations by Claire Powell. Lincoln evokes her influences but weaves a totally original tale of mystery and mayhem centered on an eccentric family living in a sprawling, ancient manor house.
Every member of the Swift family is given a name randomly chosen from the sacred Family Dictionary, a name understood to determine their personality and interests. Shenanigan Swift, the protagonist, is indeed a troublemaker, but must apply her daring and smarts to solve the mystery when Arch-Aunt Schadenfreude is murdered. Helping her are her squabbling sisters, Phenomena and Felicity, and Cousin Erf (who is nonbinary and has rejected their Dictionary name).
Another major character is a transgender woman, although her trans identity is not a focus of the plot. She does, however, mention the incorrect assumption of her gender at birth to reassure Erf that identities aren’t dictated; it’s a nice moment of elder queer mentorship.
An oddball series of secondary characters (Uncle Maelstrom! Cousin Atrocious!) and a twisty plot make the book a delight, but Lincoln’s love of language is what makes it shine. There are eye-rolling puns, captivating archaisms, and dazzling descriptions—but under the fun of all this is an unexpectedly poignant and powerful message about finding who we are and how we fit into our families, both born and chosen.
Just out today, The Swifts: A Gallery of Rogues, continues the fun. Shenanigan is off to Paris, chasing a stolen painting and connecting with the Martinets, the French branch of the Swift family tree—although the two sides have long been estranged. She’s joined by Phenomena, Erf, and Uncle Maelstrom (who is queer), and meets a set of French cousins, including Pomme (Apple) and Souris (Mouse). Shenanigan must apply her smarts and her willingness to break rules to discover the secret behind the eccentric group of art thieves known as Ouvolpo—but the stakes rise when an art heist turns into a murder mystery.
The queerness here simply is; several same-sex relationships and other nonbinary characters are introduced with no fanfare. But there are also moments that acknowledge characters’ queerness, small parts of the whole that add inclusion and authenticity without making queerness a focus of the plot.
Themes of entitlement, colonialism, and marginalization emerge as the story unfolds, but never become preachy; Lincoln’s sharp wit makes her points incisively, while an occasional lyricism adds depth. Nestled among the twisty plot, quirky characters, and linguistic antics, too, are observations about what it means to be a family and how one’s view of family members can change as one grows. Lincoln weaves this in while keeping the murder mystery/heist adventure at the fore; it’s a masterful balance, making this volume, like the first, highly recommended. And while the ending is satisfying, there’s a clear setup for yet another volume to come. Magnifique!
The Ali-O’Connors (The House on Sunrise Lagoon)
In this series by Nicole Melleby, we meet the Ali-O’Connor family: Mom, Mama, Harbor, Sam (Samantha), Marina, and twins Cordelia and Lir, who live on the eponymous lagoon on the Jersey shore. Throughout the series, Melleby shows the personal and inter-sibling questions and challenges that may arise in a family formed in multiple ways, where not all of the kids may share a last name, where one has a father from a parent’s previous marriage, two have a sperm donor, and two are adopted, including one with a grandmother unrelated to the others, who used to be her caretaker.
The books also give us perfectly imperfect parents in Mom and Mama. They make mistakes; they lose their tempers; but the books show us that people and families can recover from such mistakes; apologies can happen and communication be restored. While Melleby doesn’t shy from showing family challenges, however, she also shows that they are not insurmountable, and that, despite differences in names, history, and extended family members, the Ali-O’Connors are nevertheless one family.
The first volume, Sam Makes a Splash (Algonquin), focuses on 11-year-old Sam; the second Marina in the Middle, on 10-year-old Marina, and the third, Halfway to Harbor, on 12-year-old oldest child Harbor (who develops a same-sex crush herself). Each thoughtfully and with gentle humor explores how the protagonist is finding her place in the family and the world.
The Lotterys
The parents, we learn, are two couples who became best friends and decided to have a baby together—then won the lottery, bought a big house in Toronto, grew their family further through childbearing and adoption, and took the mutual surname Lottery. The family’s life of controlled chaos is thrown off-kilter when PopCorn’s grumpy, homophobic and racist father, is diagnosed with dementia and must come to live with them. The story is told from the perspective of nine-year-old Sumac, the sensible “good girl” among the multiracial, multiethnic, neurodiverse siblings.
In the second volume, The Lotterys More or Less, Sumac feels responsible for making sure their family’s winter holiday celebrations go according to plan. But an ice storm traps one dad and a brother out of the country; their visitor from Brazil gets injured and needs care; and then the city loses power. Can Sumac make sure their holiday is still a success?
The story unfolds as a slice of the Lotterys’ variegated and chaotic life, complete with sibling rivalry (and cooperation), parental exhaustion (and love), and an interweaving of the many traditions—old and new—reflecting the family members and their diverse neighbors.
The Fletchers and Johnston-Fischers
Combine four boys of assorted ages, two dads, a Maine coon cat, and a dog named Sir Puggleton into a home and stir well. Sprinkle on a doting aunt, a surly neighbor, and assorted classmates. Season with a collapsing backyard hockey rink, an untimely power outage, and a Thanksgiving culinary disaster. Dana Alison Levy’s The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher
In the sequel, The Family Fletcher Takes Rock Island, the family is off on their yearly vacation to Rock Island, a fictional New England locale. They discover, however, that the lighthouse they loved to explore is being targeted by a real estate developer who wants to turn it into condominiums. There’s an overarching theme of change as the boys realize their regular vacation spot might never be the same, and as they begin to sense changes in themselves as they grow.
This Would Make a Good Story Someday follows the Fletchers neighbors, the two-mom Johnston-Fischer family. After one of the moms, a blogger, wins a fellowship to take a family train trip across the country and write about it, they pack up their three daughters (genetic and adopted; two White and one Asian) and eldest daughter’s boyfriend, and depart. As with the Lotterys, it is the sensible middle child (in this case, 12-year-old Sara) whose perspective forms the bulk of the tale.
Levy mixes hilarious family escapades with amusing facts about the places they visit. Despite the humor, though, the book also offers much insight into the nature of relationships, familial and otherwise, with a dash of social justice, and ends up being surprisingly touching.
Levy rounds out the stories in this world with It Wasn’t Me, which centers around one of the Fletchers’ classmates, whose photography project was vandalized with threats and anti-gay slurs. It doesn’t focus on a large or a same-sex parented family like Levy’s other three books, although it mentions Jax’s dads; while it’s not as connected to the other books I mention it here for series completists.
The Marches
Yes, those Marches, the family made famous in Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women. Two modern graphic novel reinterpretations of the story, however, envision a queer Jo (which we all knew anyway): Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: A Modern Graphic Retelling of Little Women, by Rey Terciero, illustrated by Bre Indigo (Little, Brown), and Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of), by Kathleen Gros (Quill Tree). Each has a slightly different take on the story; click through to my full reviews of each for more details, or just read them both!
