The venerable Little Golden Book series has been publishing an increasing number of LGBTQ-inclusive titles, including this biography of singer and actor Billy Porter. The book follows Porter from his childhood growing up in the Black church community to his Broadway and television success and famous Oscars tuxedo dress.
Along the way, we see how he was sometimes bullied for acting more feminine than other boys, but used his singing talents to “wow” people and “stand up to his bullies.” Throughout school and college, he honed his talents, motivated by the few images of “Seeing people who looked like him singing and dancing on the stage.”
His gay identity is hinted at but not named directly; we do learn, however, that “The record company told him to hide his true self—they wouldn’t let him talk about being on Broadway, and they made him sing love songs about girls.” We also learn of his performance as “a confident Black drag queen” in the musical Kinky Boots, which is “about accepting others for who they are,” and we read about his Emmy for his role in Pose, “about a group of LGBTQ+ New Yorkers who love to dance and express themselves.”
A few details could use a little more explanation. The book tells us, for example, that the Tony Awards are “a ceremony that celebrates the best plays and musicals on Broadway,” but not what Broadway is. “LGBTQ+” is not defined (although perhaps the target audience already knows this). And while the book explains that Porter sought role models who “looked like him,” it never tells us what aspect(s) of his appearance that refers to.
Other details seem aimed at adult readers more than kids. Young readers probably won’t care that “He got a full scholarship to the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama”; it might have been more effective to say something like, “He got an award that paid for him to go to a great drama school.” Likewise, it would have been enough to tell us that he won “television’s biggest honor, an Emmy Award”; picture-book readers probably don’t care about the additional detail that it was “for Lead Actor in a Drama Series.”
Still, the message that Porter uses his talents “to encourage everyone to be their true selves” is nicely conveyed, and grown-ups who read this book with kids will likely be Porter fans already and able to fill in some of the explanatory gaps.
