4 Queer-Inclusive Picture Books from the 1970s and 80s in School Settings

As we start the school year, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at four picture books from the 1970s and 80s showing queer families and children in school and daycare settings. Such books have been around longer than you might think.

While the first three books here do not state the characters’ queerness explicitly, I think it is still easy to see (and I include gender creativity under the broad umbrella of queerness). You can also filter my Database of LGBTQ Family Books for picture books tagged “School” to find the many other queer-inclusive titles in school settings right up to the present.

While earlier titles like the below tended to focus on queerness as something that caused a problem or question that needed to be solved or answered (even if the answer was positive), a number of recent books have characters whose LGBTQ identities are incidental to the plots, so that we can better see other aspects of their lives, too. (Add the “Incidental queerness” tag for those books.) One recent such favorite is the delightful Embarrassed Ferret, by Lisa Frenkel Riddiough, illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi (Disney Hyperion, 2025), where the protagonist’s problem (or rather, series of problems) is unrelated to the fact that she has two moms.

Whichever type of book resonates for your family (and different types may resonate at different times), I hope they bring joy and affirmation to your young ones—and I hope that their decades-long history helps people to see that these books are important and needed.

Oliver Button Is a Sissy, by Tomie DePaola (Simon & Schuster, 1979), is one of the earliest picture books to feature a boy who could be read as queer (although this wasn’t clearly stated) and “didn’t like to do things that boys are supposed to do.” The protagonist prefers to draw, dress up, and dance rather than do sports, even though the other boys tease him. Eventually, though, his courage and tap-dancing performance win over his classmates. The book was based on the childhood experiences of author Tomie dePaola, who was gay.

Jesse’s Dream Skirt, by Bruce Mack, illustrated by Marian Buchanan (Zoetic Endeavours, 1979), is the story of a boy who wears a skirt to his day care class. After some kids make negative remarks, the teacher guides the class through a supportive discussion. Long out of print, the book was reissued in 2019 in a new edition produced by illustrator Marian Buchanan. She shared with me some details about the lengthy journey to its reprinting and why it still holds lessons for today.

Lots of Mommies, by Jane Severance, illustrated by Jan Jones (Lollipop Power, 1983), tells of a girl named Emily who wakes up excited for her first day of school and for breakfast with her entire household, which includes her mother and three other women who help parent her. Although some of the other students don’t believe her when she talks about having “lots of mommies,” they eventually realize that she does. It is unclear what the relationship of the women is to each other; there is no indication whether any or all of them are romantic partners, but they are living cooperatively together. And while none of the women are definitively queer, queerness seems likely, especially since author Jane Severance, a lesbian herself, also wrote the first clearly LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ book in English, When Megan Went Away (1979).

Heather Has Two Mommies, by Lesléa Newman, illustrated by Diana Souza (In Other Words, 1989). You’ve probably heard of this one. Although it wasn’t the first LGBTQ-inclusive picture book, it was the first to show an intact family with same-sex parents, and it was the first to achieve widespread recognition beyond the LGBTQ community. In it, a girl named Heather lives happily with her two moms. When she joins her first playgroup, however, she wonders if she’s the only one who doesn’t have a father. The caregiver then asks all of the children to share a little about their families, and Heather learns that families come in many different forms, all united by love.

The cover shown here is from the original 1989 edition and (with minimal changes) the 1990 and 2000 editions published by Alyson Wonderland—but a fully revised 2015 edition with new illustrations and updated text, from Candlewick Press, is what I always recommend for families today. (It also increases Heather’s age slightly and has her starting school rather than daycare.) Please read my review of that new edition for my interview with Newman about the book’s history and the controversies it has weathered.