Reading LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books

Jennifer Miller (Edited by), Sara Austin (Edited by)

9781496854902

Hardback, published 31 January 2025

277 pages, 11 b&w illustrations; 5 tables
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm, 0.62 kg

Contributions by Sara Austin, Robert Bittner, J. Bradley Blankenship, Gabriel Duckels, Caitlin Howlett, Isabel Millán, Jennifer Miller, Kaylee Jangula Mootz, Tim Morris, Dana Rudolph, j wallace skelton, Jason Vanfosson, River Vooris, and B. J. Woodstein

Picture books are books aimed at children where the illustrations are as important, or more important, than the text. Picture books, the effects of their simple text and importance in the literary cannon, have been studied by scholars for decades, but little attention has been given to LGBTQ+ picture books. Reading LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books is a collection of essays that identifies and interprets children’s picture books that explicitly represent LGBTQ+ content.

Contributors to the volume include established and emerging scholars with expertise in the fields of children’s literature, young adult literature, cultural studies, critical race and ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, history, and education. Each essay introduces readers to several children’s books that denote unmistakable LGBTQ+ content. Essays bring various interpretive frameworks and intellectual commitments to their unique readings of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. The essays in Reading LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books produce innovative new scholarship about a range of topics including representations of LGBTQ+ marriage and parenting and LGBTQ+ history and culture. The topics explored, and theoretical frameworks applied, significantly expand available and accessible up-to-date scholarship on the growing field of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books.

• Chapter 1: Reading LGBTQ+ Children’
  s Picture Books: An Introduction
• Jennifer Miller
• Part 1: Representing LGBTQ+ Families in North American Picture Books
• Chapter 2: From Roommates to Spouses: Shifting Representations of Marriage Equality in US Picture Books from 1995 to 2020
• Jason Vanfosson
• Chapter 3: "That’
  s Not a Family": Microaggressions, Resilience, and Agency in Depictions of Same-Sex-Parented Families
• Dana Rudolph
• Chapter 4: Representation Matters Now More Than Ever: Transgender and Nonbinary Parents in Children’
  s Picture Books
• Rob Bittner
• Part 2: Real(istic) Representations of GIaNTs in Picture Books
• Chapter 5: Exceptional, Bullied, or Normal in the End: Representation of GIaNTs (Gender Independent, Nonbinary, and Trans) in Picture Books
• j wallace skelton
• Chapter 6: Be Who You Are!, I Am Jazz, I’
  m Not a Girl, and Sam! Picturing Trans Childhoods
• Sara Austin
• Part 3: Mapping Representations in European Picture Books
• Chapter 7: The Road to Hell: Scandinavian LGBTQ+ Picturebooks
• B. J. Woodstein
• Chapter 8: Il y a plein de faç
  ons de composer une famille: Some Recent French-Language LGBTQ+ Picture Books
• Tim Morris
• Part 4: Queer(ing) Culture
• Chapter 9: Many Dances, Many Regalias: Supporting the Two-Spirit Child in 47,000 Beads
• Kaylee Jangula Mootz
• Chapter 10: Queering Christmas: An Autoethnographic Author Interview about Publishing The Christmas Truck
• J. Bradley Blankenship
• Chapter 11: The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish: Playing Around with Gender and Celebrating Difference
• River Vooris
• Part 5: World Making in LGBTQ+ Children’
  s Picture Books
• Chapter 12: Apples Begone: Queer and Trans of Color Aesthetics of Joy in ABC Books
• Isabel Millá
  n
• Chapter 13: Children’
  s Imagination and the Desire for Something Different: Nonhuman Subjects in LGBTQ+ Children’
  s Literature and the Possibility of More Just Futures
• Caitlin Howlett
• Part 6: LGBTQ+ Nonfiction Children’
  s Picture Books
• Chapter 14: AIDS and the Antisocial Subject in Queer Biographical Picture Books: A Case Study on Keith Haring
• Gabriel Duckels
• Chapter 15: Now vs. Then, Here vs. There: Queer Identity and Community in Picture-Book Biographies
• Jennifer Miller
• Acknowledgments
• About the Contributors
• Index