The start of 2025 has seen a wide range of terrific new middle grade books starring transgender and nonbinary youth, in contemporary settings, a near-future community on Mars, and fantastical worlds of excitement and wonder. Share these with the young people in your lives.
In honor of Transgender Day of Visibility today, here are some terrific recent picture, chapter, and middle grade books with trans protagonists (including real-life heroes), great for reading at any time of year!
Chapter books often get short shrift, stuck between colorful picture books and weightier middle-grade titles for older tweens. But these two chapter book series, which each have new volumes out this month, are magical, queer inclusive, and worth a read!
I am thrilled and honored to bring you the cover reveal for My Gender, My Rules by Andy Passchier! This joyous picture book from Little Bee Books, in partnership with GLAAD, will help kids and their adults start to have important conversations about gender, feelings, and understanding themselves.
A timely new picture book explores the role of protests in American history, so let’s take a look—and round up some other recent picture books and middle grade titles about protests and activism. They’re all queer-inclusive, but look at a wide variety of social justice movements and moments.
Happy International Women’s Day to all women! Let’s celebrate with some of my favorite picture book biographies of queer women, a queer-parented woman, and one notable ally. They include two upcoming titles worth putting on your radar now!
Today marks Stand Up for Science 2025, part of a movement to defend science as a public good. I’m therefore highlighting three recent kids’ books, each showing a different way that LGBTQ people, characters, and themes appear in STEM-related books.
No theme today except great new books: a picture book about Pride, from a classic series; another about family diversity in nature; a chapter book with nonbinary representation; the young reader’s edition of Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider’s autobiography; a sweet middle grade graphic novel set in a fantasy world, and more.
Today is the 10th annual National Day of Reading: A Celebration of Trans Stories, so let’s celebrate with some terrific recent picture, chapter, and middle grade books with trans protagonists and role models to read today or any day!
Powerfully told and gorgeously illustrated, these are some of my favorite recent picture book biographies of Black queer Americans (including an upcoming one about Marsha P. Johnson that isn’t out quite yet but is so good I had to add it in).
