A boy named Grayson deals with the changes in his life after his dads’ divorce, in the only picture book entirely about a child of two divorced dads.
“Once upon a time,” Grayson reflects in his first-person narration, he lived with his two dads in a big house, where they made banana chocolate chip pancakes on Saturdays and read fairy tales together every night.
Then his dads divorced (for unspecified reasons), and everything changed. Papa moved to an apartment and Daddy to a smaller house. Grayson had to divide his things between the houses—and now splits his time between them as well, changing every week.
His dads try to convince him that this is “the new normal” and that he’ll “get used to it,” but Grayson isn’t so sure. He also worries that they got divorced because of him—we never learn why he might think this, although it seems a common worry among children of divorced parents.
One day, he hides under the bed, refusing to come out until they can all live together again. His dads meet to explain to him that the divorce isn’t his fault; they’re both just different than they were when they married, in a way that makes them know they’ll be happier apart. Daddy reassures Grayson that “you are still you,” and Papa adds, “I’m still the same Papa” and “Daddy is still the same Daddy.” This doesn’t quite resonate with their explanation that they are divorcing because they are now different, but nevertheless, Grayson grasps the main point, that they are still a family, “Just a different kind of family.”
In the final spread, Grayson is starting to believe that they can still have a “happily ever after,” and the images show him joyfully doing things with each of his dads.
Backmatter includes notes from clinical psychologist Julia Martin Burch, who offers parents some general tips for supporting their child(ren) if the parents are divorcing.
The small number of previous LGBTQ-inclusive picture books about divorce/separation (including the very first picture book in English ever to show a family with LGBTQ parents, When Megan Went Away (1979)) have either focused on two-mom families, or on a child of a mom-dad couple with one parent who now has a same-sex partner. A couple of other more general books about divorce show two-dad (and two-mom) couples among many, but Once Upon My Dads’ Divorce is the first picture book I’m aware of that is focused entirely on the child of a two-dad couple that is divorcing. The story is straightforward, with a clear pedagogic goal, but it fulfills that goal nicely and deserves much credit for addressing a gap in the literature.
Daddy is Black, Papa is White, and Grayson has tan skin and dark brown hair.
