Banned Books Week Reminds Us of the Need for LGBT-Inclusive Children’s Books
This week marks the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week, bringing issues of LGBT content in children’s books once again to the fore.
Books for Kids
Gay Dads Read from their Children’s Book for Banned Books Week
It’s Banned Books Week, the annual celebration of the freedom to read! In honor of the event, here’s a video of gay dads Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, authors of And Tango Makes Three, reading from their book, which for several years topped the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books.
New Book Compiles Decades of LGBT Children’s Literature
Books matter. “Children feel unimportant and invisible when they do not see representations of their lives and families in books,” asserts librarian Jamie Campbell Naidoo. He knows this firsthand. Growing up in the Bible Belt in the early 1980s, he says, there were no books that “mirrored my life and the lives of other queer children.” If there had been, he says, he “I would not have felt so alienated and ashamed of being different.” His classmates, too, might have understood his queerness was not strange. Such books, however, were not to be found.
Fast forward to today and Dr. Naidoo, now an assistant professor of library and information studies at the University of Alabama, has written a book of his own to help guide librarians, parents, teachers, and others seeking LGBT-inclusive titles.
Todd Parr Explains Book, Families to Illinois Adults Who Don’t Understand Them
Author Todd Parr has responded with the video below (after the jump) to the banning of his The Family Book by an Illinois school board. They banned the book after some parents complained about a page that says, “Some families have two moms or two dads.” Todd Parr is awesome.
He Sailed Off, Through Night and Day: Goodbye, Maurice Sendak
Acclaimed children’s author Maurice Sendak died yesterday at the age of 83. I love his books, both the words and the pictures, and their exploration of “the darker side of childhood,” as NPR puts it. Darker, yes, but never bleak or hopeless.
Heather — No, Miriam — Has a Sweet Passover
Lesléa Newman is best known as the author of the first children’s book to feature LGBT parents, Heather Has Two Mommies, as well as other LGBT-inclusive picture books, such as Mommy, Mama, and Me; Daddy, Papa, and Me; and Donovan’s Big Day. The prolific author’s latest book, A Sweet Passover, does not feature an LGBT family, but is nonetheless a charming tale worthy of consideration by readers here.
Adrienne Rich: The Passing of a Lesbian Icon
Adrienne Rich was a mother, a lesbian, and one of our country’s foremost poets and writers. Today comes the news that she has died at the age of 82. Below is one of my favorite quotes from her works, about invisibility and diversity.
Book Recommendation: Pugdog, a Gender-Bending Tail
I mentioned a few weeks ago that children’s books dealing with issues of gender identity are still few and far between. A colleague of mine, however, recently recommended Andrea U’ren’s Pugdog, a picture book about a gender nonconforming dog.
Why Burping Turtles are Like LGBT Kids Books: A Post for Dr. Seuss
Happy birthday to the good doctor, who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel on this date in 1904. While we may not be able to celebrate quite like they do in Katroo, we can celebrate Read Across America Day, an annual “reading motivation and awareness program” run by the National Education Association (NEA).
Today is also a great time to share an incident regarding Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle, since it relates to those who say that LGBT-inclusive books in the classroom are inappropriate. Geisel once said that when writing Yertle:
“What Makes a Baby?” Project Will Create a Book for All Families
I want to know what’s in the water up in Toronto, Canada. Just days after I post about S. Bear Bergman’s Toronto-based Flamingo Rampant project to produce books for trans-identified elementary school children, I find out about Cory Silverberg’s Toronto-based project to create a “What Makes a Baby” book that works for all types of families, no matter how they were formed or the number or gender of the parent(s). As Silverberg points out in the video below, kids want to know where babies come from, but they also want to know where they themselves come from–and the two questions don’t always have the same answer.