LGBT-Inclusive Books for Middle-Grade Readers

My son’s a middle-grade reader—beyond picture books, although not quite ready for young adult fare. LGBT-inclusive books for this age group seem to get less coverage than picture books and young adult ones, but here’s a nice new list—along with a longstanding one.

The new list is from Barbara Fiehn and Tadayuki Suzuki in a piece for School Library Journal. Both are professors at Western Kentucky University—not known as the most LGBT-friendly of states, so it’s especially good to see this piece from them.

Fiehn and Suzuki list a few books I’ve reviewed here, including Jennifer Gennari’s My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer, Lauren Myracle’s Luv Ya Bunches (which caused a kerfuffle with Scholastic a few years ago), and Jaime Campbell Naidoo’s great Rainbow Family Collections reference work. My own reviews tend to focus on books that depict kids with LGBT parents, since that’s my expertise (and I have to draw the line somewhere or I won’t sleep), but Fiehn and Suzuki also list books with LGBTQ children. Hop on over to see them all.

If those weren’t enough, Lee Wind, author of the wonderful I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read? blog, has his own “Middle Grade Bookshelf,” first published back in 2009 but kept up to date. He breaks the list down into books where the child is LGBTQ and books where someone in the child’s life is LGBTQ.

I haven’t read all of these books myself, so if you or your kids have, please leave a note to let us know what you thought (or share additional titles)!