Flamingo Rampant micropress is getting ready to launch its third season of “feminist, racially diverse, LGBTQ positive children’s books”! I’ve always loved their joyous approach to inclusivity, and their next set of books looks sure to continue that tradition.
It’s time for my annual roundup of some of this year’s best LGBTQ-inclusive children’s and middle-grade books and magazine! It was a banner year for such books in many ways, with a high overall volume and a surge in the often neglected middle-grade range.
Dana Alison Levy is back with her fourth middle-grade book set in the universe of The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher, her 2014 novel about a two-dad family. Her latest book, It Wasn’t Me, centers around one of the Fletchers’ classmates, whose photography project was vandalized with threats and gay slurs, and it asks readers to reflect on the assumptions we make about others.
What happens when a closeted gay teen stumbles across a secret that could alter our perception of one of the greatest figures in American history? That’s the question at the heart of a new young adult novel by a gay dad and award-winning expert on books for LGBTQ youth and their allies.
Zach Wahls made history last week as the first known person with LGBTQ parents to be elected to a state legislature, gaining a seat in the Iowa Senate. Six years ago, though, he wrote a book about his two moms—and I wrote a review, published elsewhere, that I never posted on this blog in full. Here it is, with an addendum.
A new service, launched today by a queer mom and activist, offers subscribers a quarterly, curated selection of children’s books, chosen to include characters who are LGBTQ+, feminist, of various races and ethnicities, and of other under-represented identities. In doing so, it also hopes to show publishers there’s an ongoing market for such stories.
LGBTQ History Month offers us a wonderful opportunity each October to look at the growing number of books for children and youth on LGBTQ history—including several that are new this year.
Here’s a beautiful, new, queer-inclusive children’s book that encourages taking action to create positive social change.
Continuing my National Coming Out Day week of new picture books, coming out today is a gorgeous new bilingual children’s book in English and Spanish that honors the Mexican serenata tradition even as reframes it to include one boy creating a love song for another, with the help of his father.
Brian McNaught, called “the godfather of gay diversity and sensitivity training” by the New York Times, has written a children’s book explaining “What’s gay?” in a simple, engaging rhyme—and he’s kindly making it available here free to Mombian readers.
