Five fairy tales involving children with same-sex parents (and one single queer mom). These 1991 stories feel dated now (the euphemism “friend” is sometimes used for a parent’s partner) and are wordy for a picture book, but may be of historical interest, or fun for slightly older kids who can understand the linguistic shift.
In the first, a cruel king and queen give their son, the prince, to a wizard for his experiments. The wizard turns the boy into a frog. When another boy finds him and figures out how to break the spell, he invites the prince to live with him and his dad. “My dad adopted me,” he tells the prince. “He could adopt you, too.” Then Karl, described as his father’s “friend,” suggests that one father isn’t enough for two boys and proposes that he move in, too. Jesse’s father agrees, and now the boys, Nicholas and Jesse, “both had two wonderful fathers.”
In the second, a girl named Scarlett wants to become an Eaglerider and warn the kingdom of dragons. Only boys can be Eagleriders, though. Her mom then tells her the story of falling in love with another woman, “and in my country, many people did not like that.” She therefore cut her hair short and dressed like a man in order for the two of them to travel together. She suggests Scarlett also disguise herself as a boy in order to become an Eaglerider. Scarlett in due course saves the kingdom from dragons, reveals her true identity, and inspires the queen to declare that girls can now become Eagleriders.
The third story focuses on one of Scarlett’s friends, a boy named Peter, who lives with his mother and his mother’s “friend.” People are surprised that they’re in love, because one is a bookkeeper and the other a sorcerer. But “finding a good job wasn’t easy for a lesbian sorcerer,” and the family needs help paying the rent. Peter sets off—successfully—to find a lost treasure that “would last him and his mothers for years.”
The fourth story tells of Josie, a little girl and her brother who live with their two moms in a village threatened by a giant ogre. The ogre captures one of the mothers and Josie sets off to free her, aided by some elves and a pair of magic boots. When she succeeds and is offered a reward by the queen, she refuses the entire treasure and takes just a few pieces of gold, “enough for my family and me to live very comfortably.”
The last and titular story involves a child duke who is named as regent while the king and queen are away, and starts making random proclamations. First, he outlaws jelly beans. Next, he says that children should not read books that have gained the royal seal of approval. He then declares that because he turned out so well with a mother and a father, other family structures are banned, and children with too many or too few mothers or fathers will be thrown into jail. A girl with two moms realizes that she and her friends Nicholas, Jesse, and Scarlett are all in danger. They concoct a plan to mock the duke’s proclamations in front of the villagers so that everyone can see how ridiculous they are. When he tries again to institute new rules, everyone laughs him out of the kingdom.
