Battles Rage Over Children's Books With Gay Themes

The business of children's book publishing makes it particularly difficult for gay-themed children's books to make it into print, Levine explained. "The hard truth is that publishing is financially and market driven, and children's books are an embattled segment of the market," he said.

"It's harder to make a financial success out of a picture book these days, and that makes for even more conservatism on the part of publishers. … They're business-oriented and they will do what in their own minds is most likely to be financially successful. I want to hasten to add I don't think that's necessarily true, that a picture book with lesbian or gay parents is not going to sell well, but that's an assumption on the part of a large number of the people responsible for getting books to kids."

One of the unique issues with children's picture books is that, unlike most adult and young adult books, they are printed with four-color illustrations in smaller press runs. That means they cost more to make and need to sell more to earn profits. There is also the complicated way in which they're distributed: not only through bookstores, retail outlets and libraries, but also through schools, including school book clubs and school libraries — the places where conflicts and protests are most likely to arise.

"For example," Levine said, "you're less likely to see a book featuring gay or lesbian parents in a school book club because that book club is going to be afraid that parents will protest, will withdraw, will not use the book club at all, will kick up a fuss. We've seen how this happens in school libraries all the time."

But Levine said that the one thing that can best overcome the "natural financial conservatism of a for-profit corporate environment" are books with great stories and illustrations that editors and booksellers are willing to champion.

In this respect, there have been vast improvements in the richness and complexity of these stories in recent years, as evidenced by Tango Makes Three, with its grounding in a true story and charming, realistic illustrations, and King & King, with its imaginative twist on fairy tale conventions.

The earliest children's books to depict gay characters — books such as 1989's Heather Has Two Mommies and 1991's Daddy's Roommate — were comparable to the first wave of gay-themed movies including An Early Frost, Making Love and Doing Time on Maple Drive that treated homosexuality earnestly as an issue with a capital "I."

As Levine commented: "Leslea Newman broke huge ground by writing a book in which she declares 'Heather has two mommies.' But at this point, 20 years later, we get it. Heather already knows she has two moms. Now we need stories where Heather has lost her teddy bear and we see how her two moms help her. … I think the hardest thing to find is books that are just wonderful real stories that happen to have gay and lesbian characters in them."

Books such as Everywhere Babies and ABC: A Family Alphabet Book take this approach, portraying many different types of families. Illustrations of same-sex parents are included without comment.

It's also an approach taken by Todd Parr who, unlike the authors of many of these other books, has attained a major level of mainstream success. Parr is the author of 30 books and counting, published by Little, Brown, one of the largest commercial publishers, and his work is also the basis for an Emmy-nominated animated TV series, ToddWorld.

Although Parr is comfortable identifying himself as out, he is concerned about being pigeonholed as "that homosexual who writes books about two moms and two dads." Key to his success is that his books can't be confined to niches or the issues-section of the bookstore.

As Parr said: "The core message of what I set out to do was to empower kids to feel good about themselves while understanding about differences. I think that's the motivation for everything I do. Just to help kids feel good in a simple and fun way."