Saving Montgomery Sole - A teen with two moms and a gay best friend confronts the mysterious parts of life

Saving Montgomery Sole by Mariko Tamaki

Montgomery Sole is a square peg in a small town, forced to go to a school full of jocks and girls who don't even know what irony is. It would all be impossible if it weren't for her best friends, Thomas and Naoki. The three are also the only members of Jefferson High's Mystery Club, dedicated to exploring the weird and unexplained, from ESP and astrology to super powers and mysterious objects.

Then there's the Eye of Know, the possibly powerful crystal amulet Monty bought online. Will it help her predict the future or fight back against the ignorant jerks who make fun of Thomas for being gay or Monty for having two moms? Maybe the Eye is here just in time, because the newest resident of their small town is scarier than mothmen, poltergeists, or, you know, gym.

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This Is How You Say Goodbye - A Memoir Of A Daughter's Struggle to Make Sense Of Her Relationship With Her Gay Father Who Died Of AIDS When She Was A Child

This Is How You Say Goodbye by Victoria Loustalot

When Victoria was eight years old her father swept her up in a fantasy: a trip around the world. It was a grandiose plan and she had fallen for it. But it had never been so much as a possibility. Victoria’s father was sick. He was HIV positive and soon to fall prey to AIDS. Three years later he would be gone.

When Victoria realized that the grand trip with her father wasn’t going to happen, she was devastated. Her mother assumed she’d get over it, that eventually it would become just a shrug. But it didn’t. In the years to come, Victoria wondered what it would have been like to have been alone with her dad all those months, to see him outside of his sickness, beyond anything related to their family or their life. To have been with him in a new context. That’s what she wanted. And that’s what she did.

Some fifteen years after that initial promise, Victoria went to Stockholm, to Angor Wat, and to Paris. She went to the places they were meant to see together, and she went to make peace with her father, too. Because while he’d always be forty-four, she’d gone on accumulating birthdays. Every year, her understanding of him continued to evolve and their relationship was still alive. Victoria Loustalot felt trapped beneath all of the unanswered questions he left behind. She needed to be set free. She needed to say goodbye.

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The Center Of Everything - A Middle Grade Story of A Girl Dealing With Loss, Love and the Power of Friendship

The Center Of Everything by Linda Urban

For Ruby Pepperdine, the “center of everything” is on the rooftop of Pepperdine Motors in her donut-obsessed town of Bunning, New Hampshire, stargazing from the circle of her grandmother Gigi’s hug. That’s how everything is supposed to be—until her grandmother dies, Ruby messes up and things spin out of control. But she has one last hope. It all depends on what happens on Bunning Day, when the entire town will hear Ruby read her winning essay. And it depends on her twelfth birthday wish—unless she messes that up too. Can Ruby’s wish set everything straight in her topsy-turvy world?

What's LGBTQ about it? Ruby’s best friend Lucy has two dads. But it's not really a plot point, it just is.

My thanks to Yapha for the heads-up on this book including two dads!  Add your review of "The Center of Everything" in comments!

Fairyland: A Memoir Of My Father - a young girl grows up in 1970s and 80's San Francisco with an openly gay Father

Fairyland: A Memoir Of My Father by Alysia Abbott

After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation — few of whom are raising a child.

From the Towleroad review by Garth Greenwell, "Four months after her father died of AIDS-related causes in 1992, Alysia Abbott found the diaries he kept over the twenty years he raised her as a single father. She quotes from those diaries extensively in her account of their life together, along with his poems and letters and wonderful comics, and it’s Abbott’s use of her father's writing that gives much of this sometimes searing book its force, making for one of the most powerful accounts of a father-child relationship I've read."


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Vuto - A Story about a completely unprepared U.S. Peace Corps worker in Malawi (she has two dads)

Vuto by A.J. Walkley

Vuto is only 17 when her third child dies, mere days after birth.

Malawian tradition prevents men from considering a child their own until it has survived for two weeks. Frustrated at not being able to speak to her husband, Solomon, about all three of the children she’s had to bury alone, Vuto forces him to acknowledge the dead baby. Her rejection of tradition causes Solomon and the village elders to banish Vuto from the only home she’s ever known. She seeks refuge in the hut of U.S. Peace Corps volunteer Samantha Brennan, where Solomon discovers his wife has not left as she was told.

When Solomon arrives in the night to attack Vuto, Samantha disregards her oath to remain uninvolved in village politics and interjects herself into the center of the conflict, defending Vuto and killing Solomon in the process.

The women go on the run from Vuto’s village and the Peace Corps, encountering physical, ethical and cultural struggles along the way.

This novel is told from the perspectives of Vuto, Samantha and two other Peace Corps volunteers.

Mentioned several times throughout the novel, Samantha's parents are gay male life partners who adopted Sam when she was a baby. She credits some of her idealism from being raised in an open-minded, liberal, LGBT-headed family.

This indie published book was funded by the author's successful kickstarter campaign.  A.J. has also written about being bisexual and in the Peace Corps in Malawi at the Huffington Post. Add your review of "Vuto" in comments!

Richer - A Questioning Teen Novel with a Gay Dad

By Jean Blasiar

The sequel to "Poor Rich," "Richer" continues the story of Rich, whose poem gets adapted to music by a rock star... which turns out to be a nightmare.

With his parrot U2 as his companion, Rich tries to deal with his mom's divorce, his gay dad, a major health complication, and trying to figure out the mysteries, pain and ecstasy of first love.


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Daddy, Papa, and Me

By Leslea Newman, illustrated by Carol Thompson

The child in this board book is a rambunctious toddler, with two loving Dads:

Daddy and Papa.

There's a rhyming day full of the family's activities: dress up, painting, paper airplanes, baking a pie, playing instruments, sewing up a doll, tossing a ball, and playing outdoors. At the end of which our heroine (or hero, again it's drawn so we can imagine the child being either a girl or a boy) says:

"Does anybody need a rest?"

Daddy and Papa say, "Yes, yes, yes!"

Now Daddy and Papa are tucked in tight.

I kiss them both and say "Night-night!"

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. Being a father in a two Dad family, this book means so much to me. And it's really books like this, read by gay and straight families alike, that will help change our world for the better.

Thank you, Leslea and Carol!

Thank you!

Mommy, Mama, and Me

By Leslea Newman, illustrated by Carol Thompson

Finally, a GLBTQ Family board book for the youngest kids!

A very young (shown standing up but not yet walking) child has two moms:

Mommy and Mama.

In soft lilting rhymes, there's a day of little moments -

"Mommy picks me up, up, up. Mama pours juice in my cup."

There's an outing, a nap, cooking together, a bath, and then our first person hero (or heroine, the illustrations leave it open for us to interpret the child's gender) is tucked in and kissed goodnight.

It's Lovely.

Absolutely lovely.

This book will make a huge difference to all those kids who are part of two Mom families. And it will help make our world a better place, for everyone else who reads it will clearly see that what binds together GLBTQ-headed families is the same thing that binds together heterosexual-headed families: LOVE!

Thank you, Leslea and Carol! I sure wish this board book had been read to me when I was a little kid!

Namaste,
Lee

Gay Penguins in Germany raise a Baby Penguin!

It's like a story book:

Boy Penguin hero meets Boy Penguin hero. They fall in love. They live in a town with two other Boy Penguin couples. They have parties. Life is good.

Anti-gay activists bring in three girl penguins to set the gay penguins on the "straight" path. The girls are nice, but the Boy Penguin Hero couple, and all the other Boy Penguin couples, stay true to their hearts, and stay gay.

The Boy Penguin Hero couple want to have a baby penguin, to love and raise.

An egg, rejected by it's opposite sex penguin parents, is given to the Boy Penguin Hero couple.

They hatch the egg, and raise the baby penguin as their own.

And they all live Happily Ever After.

It is like a storybook, isn't it? Well, it's also a true story. (see the newspaper article here!)

And reading about these gay german penguin parents reminded me of just how wonderful this picturebook for children is:

And Tango Makes Three

Read the article. Read the book. And believe in your heart that gay people can grow up, fall in love, and become wonderful parents!

Because that's the truth.

I know, because I'm blessed enough to be living it.

Namaste,
Lee

ps - thanks to Scott for sharing this with me!

And Tango Makes Three

by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole

I love this book.

Based on the incredibly sweet and true story of a gay male penguin couple (Roy and Silo) at the New York City Central Park Zoo, who bond and build a nest of stones - and try to hatch a pebble. When there's an extra egg that needs a family, the zookeeper gives it to Roy and Silo, and they end up raising the little girl penguin that hatches, Tango.

There are many animal families in the Central Park Zoo, but Tango is the first one to have two Daddies.

"And Tango Makes Three" was the MOST challenged book in the United States of America for the last two years! (A "challenge" is when a parent or other adult protests the inclusion of a book in a library's collection.) And if things like that make you mad as hell, you should check out AS IF: Young Adult Authors Supporting Intellectual Freedom whose blog includes some great news and discussions regarding the continuing challenges facing many books today...

As a gay Daddy, I have experienced many times over how "And Tango Makes Three" is a fantastic tool for talking to people about MY family. It's a great starting point for discussing MY daughter having two Daddies, and about how at the end of the day, being a good parent is not about gender. It is about devotion, selflessness, and love.



I love this book. I love reading it to my child. And to have had it read to me when I was a child would have been so wonderful...

Thank you, Justin, Peter, and Henry!

Truly, this book makes me so happy.