If you haven’t already gotten a copy of The Christmas Truck, the new holiday-themed book featuring a family with two dads, it’s not (quite) too late. (Christmas has 12 days, after all.) Here’s a video about it to give you a taste, or to bring it to life in a new way if you’ve read it already.
LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books can make great holiday presents. Here are some new ones from the past year to add to your kids’ collections.
Many of us are starting our holiday shopping this week, so it’s great to be able to share a fun new Christmas picture book starring a child with two dads!
If you’re part of a two-mom family, like mine, that had kids through donor insemination, you may have had trouble finding books that explain to your young children how they came to be. A new Kickstarter project hopes to add to that small list.
Combine four boys of assorted ages, two dads, a Maine coon cat, and a dog named Sir Puggleton into a home and stir well. Sprinkle on a doting aunt, a surly neighbor, and assorted classmates. Season with a collapsing backyard hockey rink, an untimely power outage, and a Thanksgiving culinary disaster. Dana Alison Levy’s superb new middle-grade novel, The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher (Delacorte Press), combines all these ingredients and more to create a hysterically funny story that is simultaneously full of heart.
Just in time for the Jewish New Year comes a new picture book by Lesléa Newman, author of Heather Has Two Mommies, taking us on a year-long journey through the Jewish holidays.
Madame Martine is the latest picture book from Sarah Brannen, the author and illustrator whose gay-inclusive children’s book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding sits on many of our shelves. It doesn’t have any explicitly LGBTQ characters this time, but it’s a charming tale and I’m happy to support an LGBTQ-inclusive author even on other projects, especially when they’re as charming as this one.
What do you do if you’re sure a gremlin is sneaking into your house at night, but your moms don’t believe you? That’s the dilemma for a girl named Emlyn, star of Emlyn and the Gremlin, a fanciful new picture book in which the fact of her two moms is merely incidental to the tale.
I wrote recently about a new Kickstarter campaign by Flamingo Rampant, which will launch a book club for new LGBTQ and two-spirit picture books, committed to making half of them by and about people of color. I was happy to see the project mentioned at Slate — but the article incorrectly says that the last children’s book featuring same-sex parents who are not White was Asha’s Mums, published in 1990. That’s not true. Although the number is small, and we desperately need more, there have been a few.
The past few years have been sorely lacking in quality, LGBTQ-inclusive picture books. There have been some, but they’ve been few and far between. Author and educator S. Bear Bergman aims to change that with the launch of a subscription-based book club that will deliver a new LGBTQ and two-spirit picture book to your home or school every other month.
