It’s time for my annual roundup of some of this year’s best LGBTQ-inclusive children’s and middle-grade books and magazine! It was a banner year for such books in many ways, with a high overall volume and a surge in the often neglected middle-grade range.
A new service, launched today by a queer mom and activist, offers subscribers a quarterly, curated selection of children’s books, chosen to include characters who are LGBTQ+, feminist, of various races and ethnicities, and of other under-represented identities. In doing so, it also hopes to show publishers there’s an ongoing market for such stories.
LGBTQ History Month offers us a wonderful opportunity each October to look at the growing number of books for children and youth on LGBTQ history—including several that are new this year.
Here’s a beautiful, new, queer-inclusive children’s book that encourages taking action to create positive social change.
Continuing my National Coming Out Day week of new picture books, coming out today is a gorgeous new bilingual children’s book in English and Spanish that honors the Mexican serenata tradition even as reframes it to include one boy creating a love song for another, with the help of his father.
Brian McNaught, called “the godfather of gay diversity and sensitivity training” by the New York Times, has written a children’s book explaining “What’s gay?” in a simple, engaging rhyme—and he’s kindly making it available here free to Mombian readers.
National Coming Out Day is this week, and I’m celebrating with reviews of several new LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books that are coming out! The first—part of a partnership to increase LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books—is about a girl learning to understand her transgender sibling.
It’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day today, so I want to highlight the one queer-inclusive children’s book I know of that centers on an indigenous family—while also celebrating the many types of families in our world today.
A new middle grade book gives us a queer romance set in the U.S. South in 1977, long before gay-straight alliance clubs, marriage equality, or any kind of LGBTQ-inclusive books for children and youth. It will likely still resonate with young people today, however (and maybe some of their parents).
I know we’ve made progress towards increasing the number of LGBTQ-inclusive middle grade books when three come out within weeks of each other that are not just new books, but sequels or sophomore efforts. The authors are also all queer themselves!
