I feel obliged to point out, however, that while the NEA has a fascinating and packed Diversity Calendar, worth a read, there is one major heritage month missing from it. In June. Can you guess? Harumph.

Still, the good doctor himself remains a favorite of mine even now. In honor of the event, I invite you to leave a comment with any or all of the below:

• The name of your favorite Seuss book.
• A rewritten Seuss title, giving it an LGBT theme. (Of course, One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads has already been done for real.) My entry, in honor of the high-protein, low-carb diet I had to be on while taking one particular fertility drug: “In Vitro Fertilized Eggs and Ham.”
• A Seuss-style stanza about your family.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

To participate in the Challenge, simply read relevant books (or short stories, poems, or essays), post reviews on your blog, and enter the Challenge as directed. Participants will also be entered into drawings for a variety of prizes.

There are also mini-challenges each month, in which people are encouraged to read and post about books on particular topics. The mini-challenge for February is People of Color, and for March it is Graphic Novels. Young Adult works are coming up in April, and Picture Books in September, among other categories.

I know many of you are voracious readers. Go show GLBT Reading some love!

She’s captured the images of Olympic skaters like Weir, Rachael Flatt, Sasha Cohen, and many others. Check them out in the Figure Skating section of her Web site. (Please keep in mind that they are subject to copyright.)

Brannen is a regular contributor to Skating Magazine, and along with 2006 Junior World Champion pair skater Drew Meekins, writes and contributes photographs to a regular column on Ice Network. One of Brannen’s drawings is in the collection of the World Figure Skating Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

If any of you have children who skate, you might want to read Sarah and Drew’s column from a couple of years back, in which they ask Johnny Weir’s mom Patti for her thoughts on being Johnny’s mom and her advice for other skating parents.

I took my own son skating for the first time yesterday, and he had a blast. I have no idea if his interest will last, but I think Patti Weir’s tips could be applied to many other sports and endeavors. It sounds like she has a healthy perspective on what really matters: “Be the positive reinforcement to your child.”

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.)

The American Library Association’s Rainbow Project has just published its third annual Rainbow Bibliography, a list of recommended, LGBT-inclusive books for readers under age 18.

Nel Ward, head of the Rainbow Project, says one of the biggest problems librarians have with including LGBT-inclusive books in their collections is that they don’t know what to buy. The Bibliography is designed to help them select a range of appropriate, quality publications.

LGBT book-award programs, such as the Lambda Literary Awards or the ALA’s own Stonewall Book Awards, “highlight just the very, very best,” Ward noted in an interview. In contrast, the Rainbow Bibliography takes a broader view. “There’s just a lot of good reading out there, some with literary merit, some genre stuff, that doesn’t see the light of day or is in hiding,” she explained. “Once you’ve bought the top two, three, four on a list, where do you go from there?”

The Rainbow Bibliography is not a catch-all of books with LGBT content, however. Ward said that she and her committee of eight ALA members looked at almost 150 books, nominated 64, and selected 46 for the final list. Works published between July 2008 and October 2009 were eligible. In order to be considered, books needed to have significant LGBT content, be accessible to readers under age 18, and be of sufficient quality.

The committee took a loose interpretation of LGBT content with respect to some of the picture books on the list. Several have what Ward called “implicit” content. “They don’t come out and say, ‘Oh yes, I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay,’” she said. “What we did was say, ‘Does this look like a [same-sex] family? Does this look like a couple?’ . . . Or does this look like prejudice that could be compared to GLBT prejudice?” In the case of Lynne Rickards’ Pink!, about a pink penguin who tries to live with flamingos when he is rejected at home, one of the committee members reported that a reader came into her library and said she didn’t want the book because it was gay—even though it is not explicitly so. That was enough to bring it to the committee’s attention.

The Rainbow Project gave special commendation to two board books for toddlers, both with more obvious LGBT content: Mommy, Mama, and Me and Daddy, Papa, and Me, by Lesléa Newman, author of the classic Heather Has Two Mommies, one of the first LGBT-inclusive children’s books.

The committee also cited four other works for “exceptional quality and impact”: How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity, a collection for teens edited by Michael Cart; Ash, by Malinda Lo, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist; Into the Beautiful North, by Luis Alberto Urrea, about three young women and their gay friend seeking to protect their Mexican town; and Finlater, by Shawn Stewart Ruff, the story of two teens who fall in love and must deal with homophobia and racial tension in the 1970’s.

Ward, in an interview, also highlighted two of the books with transgender characters. One is the fictional Almost Perfect, by Brian Katcher, about a boy who falls in love with a girl and finds out she’s transgender. “It’s very nicely done,” she said, “and it shows the difficulty on both sides of dealing with this situation.”

The other is Mara Drummond’s Transitions – A Guide To Transitioning for Transsexuals and Their Families. Although it is not aimed at youth per se, Ward said she thinks it will be of use to students in middle school and beyond. She relates that in Portland, Oregon, near her home, there have been newspaper articles about two ministers and a high school teacher who made gender transitions and remained in their positions. “These are people that young people will then need to know information about,” she observed. “I think [Transitions] will provide them good information about why they [transition]. It’s not clinical. It’s just very, very straightforward material.”

Ward noted that although there are also several other non-fiction works on the list, none were written specifically for children and young adults, a gap she hopes some authors and publishers will remedy.

One of the difficulties of creating the list, Ward said, is that the cataloguing headings assigned to books by the Library of Congress do not always indicate LGBT content. The lack of appropriate subject headings meant that at least one book—Alison Goodman’s Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, which has both a crossdressing character and a transgender one—was missed by the committee until after its October 2009 deadline. The good thing is, Ward noted, that a sequel is due out this fall, and should be a candidate for a future Rainbow Bibliography.

Although there is much overlap between the Rainbow Bibliography and the ALA’s list of the most frequently banned and challenged books, Ward said feedback about the Bibliography has been overwhelmingly positive, both from librarians and children. Youth are posting to online social networks “about how grateful they are to get these books,” she said. Gay-straight alliances and other diversity programs are also using it as a core list for their work.

Ward is now stepping down as head of the Rainbow Project, although she will remain on the committee. She will instead be heading up a new ALA venture to create an offshoot of the Rainbow Bibliography for adults.

LGBT youth and children of LGBT parents don’t have to wait for a list aimed at them, however. The entire Rainbow Bibliography is available online at the Rainbow Project Web site.

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I’m annoyed every time a children’s book with LGBT content is challenged, but I’m especially upset by challenges to Tango. It’s a true story, for heaven’s sake—and not the only real-life example of a same-sex penguin pair. Somehow, though, it has managed to be the most-challenged book in the U.S. for three years in a row, according to the American Library Association (ALA). It seems like it’s off to another good start, so to speak.

Expect many of the new books on the ALA’s just-out 2010 Rainbow List to be challenged in the coming year.

SLJ also notes that the ruling also motivated the school to expand a system whereby parents can view library card catalogs from home and restrict their own children’s reading material. Parents of middle school and high school students had access to the system; now parents of elementary students do as well. I think that’s a wonderful solution that allows parents to take responsibility for their own children without imposing their views on others. Schools elsewhere should take heed.

Bravo to the school board that voted to retain the book, especially in a state known for conservative views of education.

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The Bibliography is a list of recommended titles for youth from birth to age 18 that contain “significant and authentic” GLBTQ content. The titles are chosen by the GLBT Round Table and the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the American Library Association. This is not a list of every children’s book published with GLBTQ content, but rather a set of books chosen by librarians for both quality and content. The books for this year’s list were published between July 2008 and October 2009.

The Rainbow Project Web site has the full list. Below are the books on the list that I’ve written about here at Mombian, with links to my original posts.

• Lo, Malinda. Ash. Gr. 8+.
• Newman, Lesléa. Il. Carol Thompson. Daddy, Papa, and Me and Mommy, Mama, and Me. Pre-K.
• (The above entries were noted for exceptional merit, along with Luis Alberto Urrea’s Into the Beautiful North, and Ed. Michael Cart’s How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity, which I have not read.)
• Polacco, Patricia. In Our Mother’s House. Gr. K-3.
• Walliams, David. Il. Quentin Blake. The Boy in the Dress. Gr. 3+.
• Ed. Mitchell Gold with Mindy Drucker. Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America. Gr. 7+.
• Hart, Melissa. Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood. Gr. 8+.

Congratulations to all the selected authors and illustrators!

As Martin once said, ‘We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny… an inescapable network of mutuality… I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.’

Therefore, I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

After the jump, a number of books for young children about Dr. King. What struck me most about these books was the quality of the illustrations, consistently a notch above the average in children’s literature, and a fitting tribute to their subject.

• Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr., by Jean Marzollo is one of the few books geared for the preschool age group. As such, it is very simplified, but still manages to convey a sense of why we celebrate Dr. King’s life. A forward gives suggestions on how to explain his death in age-appropriate ways. The oil pastel and scratchboard illustrations by Brian Pinkney are full of feeling.
• Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by Doreen Rappaport, aims at children a few years older. It’s a little more in depth, and doesn’t shirk from explaining that the civil rights marchers “were jailed and beaten and murdered.” It’s notable for the large-font quotations from Dr. King throughout the text. Bryan Collier’s watercolor and collage illustrations are evocative and dramatic. Both Collier and Rappaport received Coretta Scott King Book Award honors for previous works.
• My Dream of Martin Luther King by Caldecott Honor winner Faith Ringgold has also gotten excellent reviews for this age group, but I have not had the opportunity to read it myself.
• I’ve Seen the Promised Land: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by another Coretta Scott King Award-winning author, Walter Dean Myers, is a little more text heavy, probably best for the older elementary ages. Leonard Jenkins keeps up the run of excellent artwork with his vivid paintings.
• I Have A Dream contains the text of Dr. King’s most famous speech, with illustrations by 15 Coretta Scott King Award-winning artists. The book shows us how emotional words can translate into emotional pictures. Each of the artists also explains his or her approach to the project. The pictures should appeal to young children of all ages, especially those who have read one or more of the titles above. Older children may want to delve into the text itself.

This is not a comprehensive list. Please feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

As always, more videos with positive images of LGBT families at the Mombian YouTube channel.

Yesterday, however, came news that Margaret C. Hemenway, the mother of a first-grader at Horace Mann Elementary, a public school in D.C., had filed a complaint with the D.C. school chancellor because her son’s teacher had—horrors—mentioned to the class that she was going to get married—to a woman. The teacher had also read Sarah Brannen’s Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, about two male guinea pigs who marry, to the class.

Hemenway, a member of “Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX),” said she asked the chancellor, “What department in the DC Government we can appeal to for restoration of our child’s sense of innocence?” Her post about this on the PFOX site (http://pfox-exgays.blogspot.com/2009/12/real-purpose-of-gay-marriage.html) is full of the vilest assumptions that talking about a same-sex couple getting married means talking about sex. (You can read coverage of it at the Washington City Paper if you’d rather not visit the PFOX site.)

[Update: Reader A points out in a comment below that Hemenway has used this same schtick before. I'd even covered it, but was clearly thrown off because she had tried to use it against Obama and William Ayers last time around. I guess the whole "gay people are indoctrinating our children" gag still has some miles left in it.]

News flash: My son is in first grade, too. He’s had same-sex parents since he was born. His parents got (legally) married when he was three, and he attended the ceremony. He still doesn’t know a thing about sex.

There are going to be a lot more same-sex couples getting married in DC pretty soon. Some of their children will be talking about this in their classes. Mostly, I imagine, they’ll be discussing the flavor of the wedding cakes and the outfits they get to wear. Hemenway better get used to it.

The timing of the news about Hemenway’s complaint does not seem accidental, however, and we should not write this incident off as a one-time [or even two-time] complaint by an ultra-conservative parent. When a San Francisco first-grade class surprised their teacher by showing up at her wedding in the fall of 2008, the far-right ran with it to “prove” how legal marriage for same-sex couples would lead to it being “taught” in schools. If you think no one would fall for that, consider: Sixty-four percent of voters with children under 18 voted for Prop 8, according to CNN exit polls. Among married voters with children, the yes votes rose to 68 percent. Only 44 percent of voters without children (and 45 percent of those married without children) voted for Prop 8.

If I had to guess, I’d say that members of Congress will be inundated with tales like that of Hemenway in an attempt to get them to overturn the Council vote. Write to yours now and explain that marriage equality won’t change the fact that children of lesbian and gay parents are in class, talking about their families. There’s been no proven harm to the children of straight parents because of this. Denying marriage equality, however, has been shown to be harmful to the children of lesbian and gay parents. Demand that your members of Congress vote in the best interests of the children—all the children—and for equality.

(Thanks to Sarah Brannen for the tip.)

Editor’s Note: I am a member of the Amazon Associates program, and get a small referral fee from all purchases made at Amazon.com via links on this site. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

The pair join the famed Silo and Roy (Tango’s parents) and Z and Vielpunkt of Bemerhaven Zoo in Germany as adoptive gay penguin pairs.

The Sun quotes Curator Siani Tinley, who reports, “He’s strong and healthy and showing no signs of confusion from having non-heterosexual parents. He’s happy and loves swimming around – I think the parents are very proud.”

Also proud, I imagine, are actual gay dads Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, authors of And Tango Makes Three. Here’s what they had to say about their book topping the American Library Association’s list of the most challenged books in the country for three years in a row. That, despite the fact that their story is true—and clearly not an isolated case. How many more gay penguin parents will it take before the right stops it with their “gay parents are unnatural” argument?

Coming soon: a new advocacy and support group called COLAGPE: Chicks of Lesbian and Gay Penguins Everywhere. (With a respectful nod to my friends at COLAGE.)

(Photo: Not one of the actual penguins in question.)