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I Read an LGBTQ Book to a Room Full of Preschoolers
All children deserve stories about all kinds of families.
It’s one thing to believe all children need to hear and see diverse stories. It’s another to be the one to tell those stories, even to kids who aren’t your own. I lead a weekly playgroup for kids 0–6 and their grownups at my small-town library. For Mothers’ Day storytime, I wanted to read Heather Has Two Mommies, a favorite in our house. But one voice in my head kept asking, “Is it worth it?”
Heather Has Two Mommies, written in 1988, is one of the first children’s books to depict same-sex parenting. Lesléa Newman was inspired to write it when a lesbian mom told her she didn’t have any books to read to her child that reflected their family.
So Newman — herself a lesbian — wrote Heather Has Two Mommies, but said, “Nobody wanted to touch the book,” not mainstream publishers, not children’s book publishers, not LGBTQ publishers. So, along with friend Tzivia Gover, she raised $4,000 and self-published the first edition, with illustrations by Diana Souza.
Heather has continuously stayed in print, and I have the 25th anniversary version, published in 2015, illustrated by Laura Cornell.
Yes, in some ways, society has progressed since the 1990s, when libraries banned…
