A reader wrote to ask if I knew of any books for young children that discussed getting a new sibling—but which did not feature a mom and a dad for parents. Great question. The answer is that (to the best of my knowledge) there is one, And Baby Makes 4 by Judith Benjamin. (Don’t confuse […]
Go librarians. The American Library Association (ALA) this week announced it will add an annual award for “English-language works for children and teens of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered experience.”
(Originally published in Bay Windows, July 23, 2010. Regular readers will recognize many of the items in this mid-year roundup from previous reviews I’ve done—but there’s one new item in there, so read on.) It’s been a good year so far for books and media about LGBT parenting—but not so much for items aimed at
I have a special guest this week while Helen is away on a business trip— our six-year-old son. He offers his thoughts on one of his favorite books of the moment, Redwoods, by Jason Chin. It’s not LGBT-related at all, but it’s delightful, and our son likes it, which is reason enough for me to
Happy birthday to Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, who was born on this date in 1904. As those of you with children in elementary school likely know, today is also Read Across America Day, an an annual reading motivation and awareness program run by the National Education Association (NEA). I feel obliged to point
(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.) The American Library Association’s Rainbow Project has just published its third annual Rainbow Bibliography, a list of recommended, LGBT-inclusive books for readers under age 18. Nel Ward, head of the Rainbow Project, says one of the biggest problems librarians have with including LGBT-inclusive books in their collections is
I’ve been posting this quote from Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., every year at this time, but I think it bears repeating. Mrs. King was speaking at Lambda Legal’s 25th Anniversary Luncheon in 1998: As Martin once said, ‘We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny… an inescapable
Here is the tenth in my series of quotes from Who’s Your Daddy? And Other Writings on Queer Parenting. I’ll be running them for a couple of weeks courtesy of the book’s editor, Rachel Epstein. I’m choosing the quotes I feel are most intriguing and thought provoking; I don’t always agree with the sentiments, but
(Originally published in Bay Windows, July 29, 2009. Stay tuned for another post on what an ultra-conservative group had to say about this article.) The number of resources for LGBT families is, like my own son, small but growing. Here are some recent highlights for a variety of children’s ages: Mommy, Mama, and Me and
“Writing has always been my political activism,” said Lesléa Newman, author of Heather Has Two Mommies, the classic 1989 children’s book that was one of the first to feature a child with two moms. Her two new books, however, are sweet, simple tales of family life, without any overt politics or agenda. Mommy, Mama, and
