Contributions by Sara Austin, Robert Bittner, J. Bradley Blankenship, Gabriel Duckels, Caitlin Howlett, Isabel Millan, 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.
Jennifer Miller is a high school English teacher in Arlington, Texas. She researches LGBTQ+ children's picture books, digital culture, and subcultures. She is author of The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books, published by University Press of Mississippi, and a contributing editor to Introduction to LGBTQ+ Studies: A Cross Disciplinary Approach. Sara Austin is assistant professor of English at Kentucky Wesleyan College. She is author of Monstrous Youth: Transgressing the Boundaries of Childhood in the United States. Her interest in race, gender, and childhood identity has yielded articles in Transformative Works and Cultures, The Lion and the Unicorn, The Looking Glass: New Perspectives in Children's Literature, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, International Research in Children's Literature, Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, Adaptation, and The Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics.
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 facons 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 Millan 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
Reading LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books is a timely, engaging, and arguably groundbreaking volume. This book will be of interest to scholars of children's literature and childhood studies but also a wider public invested in queer children's literature, including teachers, librarians, parents, and other advocates.--Kenneth B. Kidd, coeditor of Alt Kid Lit: What Children's Literature Might Be The ostensible simplicity of picture books belies their formative role in worldmaking for all children, queer or otherwise, as the essayists of this volume so richly detail. Reading LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books explores this rich landscape in loving yet precise detail, illuminating the joys of representations for too long denied.--Tison Pugh, author of Queer Oz: L. Frank Baum's Trans Tales and Other Astounding Adventures in Sex and Gender
