Dana Alison Levy is back with her fourth middle-grade book set in the universe of The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher, her 2014 novel about a two-dad family. Her latest book, It Wasn’t Me, centers around one of the Fletchers’ classmates, whose photography project was vandalized with threats and gay slurs, and it asks readers to reflect on the assumptions we make about others.
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!
I’m still thinking about natural disasters today—and about three queer-inclusive middle grade books just out this year that prominently feature weather disasters—along with young people finding strength as they go through them.
A new guide to LGBTQAI+ children’s and young adult books should become a go-to resource for librarians, teachers, and parents—although it needs to clean up a few errors.
Queer parents often wonder what their children will call them, but the Lotterys have it figured out. There’s MaxiMum (from Jamaica), CardaMom (of the Mohawk Nation), and their co-parents, PopCorn (from the Yukon) and PapaDum (after the tasty cracker of his native India, not because of a lack of intelligence). The two same-sex couples are co-parenting seven children and a menagerie of animals in Emma Donoghue’s funny and clever new middle-grade novel, The Lotterys Plus One.
They’re back! The four boys, two dads, and assorted pets who romped through Dana Alison Levy’s award-winning middle-grade novel The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher return in The Family Fletcher Takes Rock Island.
Congratulations to Roe, who won last week’s giveaway of Jennifer Gennari’s LGBT-inclusive middle-grade book My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer. (For details about the book, see my earlier post.) Even if you didn’t win, though, here’s one thing you can do to help authors of LGBT-inclusive kids’ books (and thus, indirectly, our kids).
Congratulations to Lydia, who won Tuesday’s giveaway of Jennifer Gennari’s LGBT-inclusive middle-grade book My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer. If you didn’t win (or didn’t enter), however, don’t despair. Here’s another chance to do so.
I’m so excited—a new, LGBT-inclusive book for middle-grade readers, and a delightful one, at that! Jennifer Gennari’s My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer is about coming-of-age, coming out about one’s family, and baking pies. I’m happy to be doing a giveaway of two copies of the book, courtesy of publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: one today, and one later this week. Read on for details.
