These are some of my favorite books to inspire young activists. They deal with a range of issues in accessible and empowering ways sure to excite young readers!
#bookreviews
One Year Blogiversary!
It’s my one year blogiversary!
I started RaiseThemRighteous a year ago with a review of Jessica Love’s Julian is a Mermaid.
It was about a month after I attended the Children’s Literature Association’s 2018 conference and I wanted to share my research about queer children’s picture books with a larger audience. At the conference I met with an editor from the University Press of Mississippi who was interested in publishing my work. I’ve since signed a contract with Mississippi and my book about queer children’s picture books should be out Spring 2021. As excited as I was, and am, to publish academic work, it’s also very important to me that I have an audience outside academia. I want this audience to include parents, educators, librarians, and of course, queer kids, who need the books I research and review! I’ve since reviewed over 100 queer children’s books all of which can be found on my blog under “Snapshots of LGBTQ Kid Lit.” Continue reading
Lollipop Power Press/Queer History
Lollipop Power Press is responsible for publishing some of the most stereotype shattering, queer-inclusive, children’s literature of the 1970s and 1980s! Learn more about the press and follow my blog for upcoming reviews of their children’s picture book publications!
Karleen Pendleton Jimenez’s Are You A Boy or a Girl? (2000)
Are You A Boy or a Girl? (2000) by Karleen Pendleton Jimenez is a Lambda Literary Award 2001 Finalist that was adapted into the film Tomboy in 2008.
It is often thought that boyish girls have it easier than girlish boys. In fact, the idea that girls can more easily wear clothes and play with toys associated with boys is often used to diminish the challenges of being a tomboy. This book illustrates the policing of gender and hurt it causes. Continue reading
Rob Sander’ Stonewall (2019)
In his recent children’s picture book, Stonewall (2019), author Rob Sanders makes the Stonewall riots of 1969 accessible to a young audience.
Sanders creatively tells the story from the point-of-view of the Stonewall Inn itself. Continue reading
100 LGBTQ Children’s Picture Books Reviewed
I have reviewed over 100 LGBTQ* children’s picture books on my blog!
I am writing a book about LGBTQ* children’s picture books and as I identify, analyze, and evaluate books for my scholarship, I am reviewing the books on my blog. I hope the blog will be a public resource for educators, librarians, caregivers, and others interested in queering children’s bookshelves!
My reviews are of English-language books available in the US between 1971 and 2019.These books represent gay and lesbian parenting, gender expansive and transgender children, HIV/AIDS, queer grandparents, LGBTQ historical figures and histories, and so much more!
If you are an author or publisher and I haven’t reviewed your work, please email me at jlmiller1@gmail.com! If you are a blogger, avid reader, or fellow researcher, feel free to contact me!
Follow my journey by subscribing to the blog.
Craig Pomranz’s Made by Raffi (2014)
Made by Raffi (2014), written by Craig Pomranz and illustrated by Margaret Chamberlain follows Raffi as he identifies and explores activities that make him happy. The story takes place in the spring, and Chamberlain’s bright illustrations of green grass, pretty flowers, and clear blue skies set the tone of possibility and growth that is thematically explored by Pomranz. Continue reading
Lesléa Newman’s Saturday is Patty Day (1993)
Saturday is Patty Day (1993), written by Lesléa Newman and illustrated by Annette Hegel, is one of the earliest children’s picture books to deal with lesbian parenting and divorce. Newman does a wonderful job creating a teachable text that accounts for the challenges of seperation. I particularly appreciate her sensitive focus on the feelings of Frankie, the young child whose parents are divorcing. At every turn, the story rings true, and even 25+ years after it was originally published, Saturday is Patty Day is a good book to support parents, lesbian or not, in helping their children process divorce. Continue reading
Gayle E. Pitman’s A Church for All (2018)
![[By Gayle E. Pitman ] A Church for All (Hardcover)【2018】 by Gayle E. Pitman (Author) (Hardcover)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51T961nHB1L._AC_UL436_.jpg)
A Church for All (2018), written by Gayle E. Pitman and illustrated by Laure Fournier, is a charming tale about LGBTQ spirituality that is influenced by one church’s social justice approach to religion. In an informative end note, Pitman describes attending Glide Memorial Church, the church that inspires the book, at the suggestion of a friend. She writes: “For the first time I found a spiritual community that fully accepted and embraced LGBTQ people.” Continue reading
Tobi Hill-Meyer’s A Princess of Great Daring (2015)
A Princess of Great Daring (2015), written by Tobi Hill-Meyer and illustrated by Elenore Toczynski, is about a transgender girl named Jamie and her friends.
Jamie has not seen her friends all summer and plans on telling them about her gender identity. Her two moms drop her off at her friend’s house as all of her buddies are starting to play a game. They will be princes and will save a princess form distress. Jamie says she would like to be a princess and the boys are excited to have someone to rescue, but she interrupts the traditional narrative declaring that she will be “a princess of great daring.” Concerned that they will have no one to rescue, one of the boys, Liam, volunteers to be captured by a dragon. Continue reading
