Reading LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books

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 canon, 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.