For this day of love (or any time you want a little more of it), here are three sweet, fun, and queer-inclusive picture books about Valentine’s Day.
“From the day they’d met, and every day since, it had always been Bobby and Eddie—Eddie and Bobby,” begins Bobby and the Big Valentine, by Timmy Woitas, illustrated by Addy Rivera Sonda (Penguin Workshop). Bobby and Eddie do everything together, and now, Bobby wants to create a special Valentine’s card for Eddie, a card “as big as Bobby’s heart felt when they were together.” Bobby hopes that Eddie wants what he does: to live together someday in a castle as a prince and knight.
Bobby works hard with a variety of craft supplies, but still worries that Eddie won’t like the card, or that it will scare him away. Clinging to the hope that Eddie will like it, Bobby brings the giant, unwieldy card to school—and finds that Eddie has made him a similar oversized card. The boys grin happily at each other, and the final page shows them as prince and knight, riding a dragon together into the sky.
I love that this book is pure joy, with no one doubting the boy’s crush and the only question being the universal one of whether it is requited. (See my full review for some further thoughts on how this title compares to other picture books depicting two-boy crushes.)
Love, Violet, by Charlotte Sullivan Wild, illustrated by Charlene Chua (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), was (to the best of my knowledge), the first picture book to clearly depict a young girl’s same-gender crush. The charmingly written and beautifully illustrated book stars a young girl named Violet, whose short, dyed, asymmetrical haircut and purple hoodie immediately hint at a certain queer aesthetic. Only one person in her class “made Violet’s heart skip”—Mira. Violet dreams of “astounding Mira with heroic feats” and going on adventures together. She imagines herself clad in an Indiana Jones (or Ridley Jones?) fedora, swinging through a jungle with Mira; sailing a pirate ship together; exploring outer space side by side; and kneeling in armor, presenting Princess Mira with a golden gift. Can she overcome her fears and approach Mira about her feelings? (Spoiler: yes.)
Violet is shy around Mira in real life, though. As Valentine’s Day draws near, Violet summons her courage and makes Mira a paper valentine. She tucks it under her lucky cowboy hat and heads to school. When the class gives out their valentines, Violet gets nervous and distributes all of hers except for the one to Mira. Can she overcome her fears? As she reflects, she begins to piece together clues that indicate maybe Mira wants to be her valentine. She runs heroically across the playground to find Mira—only to have the wind blow her hat off and drop the valentine into the air.
Never fear, Mira offers a creative solution for the ruined card, and gives Violet a present of her own—a heart-shaped locket with a violet in it. The two of them run off, hand in hand, to adventures!
I absolutely love this book. Wild’s evocative yet spare prose captures Violet’s swirling, whirling feelings towards Mira and her hesitation about Mira’s possible reaction. Violet, with her cowboy hat, fedora, and chivalrous imaginings, comes across as a baby butch with a soft heart. Chua’s watercolors add further depth and dynamism to the tale. It’s an engaging, sweet story that addresses both the gap in representation of two girls in love and in girls whose gender expression leans masculine of center.
And while the book seems very clear that Violet and Mira’s feelings go beyond simple friendship, Wild and Chua also keep things realistic and appropriate for the age group. The girls never kiss or discuss “dating,” much less marriage (as we see in many a queer fairy tale). They simply go off adventuring together, hand in hand. The story allows these queer children to have what they deserve: happiness, with no one criticizing or questioning their relationship.
Love is a many-gendered thing, however, and Porcupine Cupid, by Jason June, illustrated by Lori Richmond (Margaret K. McElderry) leans into that. Porcupine is excited that it’s Valentine’s Day, and uses his quills like Cupid’s arrows to poke the other members of his forest community as he tells them he hopes they will find their true loves. The other animals don’t like being poked, however, and call a town meeting to discuss “the poke-y porcupine problem.” When they all meet up, however, pairs of the animals bond over their shared dislike of Porcupine’s actions, leading to new romances. Not only could some of the pairings be viewed as same-sex pairs, but queer cues in the illustrations indicate other LGBTQ identities among the animals as well. (One wears a scarf colored like the trans flag; another has a yoga mat colored like the genderqueer flag.)
The broad queer representation is delightful, though I’m not sure how I feel about relationships forming out of a common dislike of something. But—spoiler alert—Porcupine himself gets stuck by love in the end, so it seems the animals have clued in to his well-intentioned deception. Perhaps this can just be viewed as a cute parable about how some people need to be prodded into action when it comes to romance (assuming they’re not aromantic, in which case we should let them be).
(I wish there were Valentine’s Day picture books more specifically about human nonbinary kids and their crushes, too. The closest I know if is Cinda Meets Ella: A Fairly Queer Tale, by Wallace West (Little, Brown). It has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, but gives us a quirky and fun Western-themed spin on the classic fairy tale as Cinda (she/her) meets and falls in love with Ella (they/them).
For more queer-inclusive picture books about all kinds of love, romantic and otherwise, see my roundup of 40+ titles from a couple of years back, or visit my Database of LGBTQ Family Books and filter by the “Marriage/relationships” tag (and age category as desired) to see what’s new.
