The Queer Creators of Some of Children's Literatures Most Enduring Characters - A Fascinating Piece in The New York Times Magazine

The Gay History of America’s Classic Children’s Books:
From “Frog and Toad” to “Where the Wild Things Are,” many of the most enduring 20th-century titles share a secret language of queer compassion.

I love the title, and learning about this not-much-discussed overlap of queer history and children's literature. Two of many highlights from the article published last month:

“Frog and Toad” — a series of four picture books by Arnold Lobel, originally published between 1970 and 1979 — is not gay-themed. But it’s not not gay-themed either. The title characters are best friends, both male, who essentially spend their lives together. Toad, shorter and wartier, is a worrier. Frog, sleeker and greener, is an ameliorator....


But Lobel is careful to make Frog and Toad entirely nonsexual. They sleep apart, and Toad even dons a modest Edwardian bathing suit when he swims. Instead of innate animal passion, they model the elements of love that have to be discovered and cultivated: companionship, compromise, acceptance, good humor. They get into scrapes separately but get out of them together, which is not a bad definition of marriage....

Lobel’s gayness, when I learned of it much later, seemed like something I should have known all along; it lurked everywhere in his words and pictures. I don’t know how any parent, reading the stories aloud, uttering phrases like “Come back, Frog. I will be lonely!” in a heartsick, croaky voice, could avoid being forced into intimate sympathy with the animal and thus the author. Which is not to say Frog and Toad could turn you gay. But in their gentleness, their sensitivity to small gestures and their haze of slowly dispersing sadness, the stories were part of the literature of otherness that had been a central theme of adult fiction forever, if only more recently of children’s.

and

...Among the foxed hardbacks still standing sentry in my sons’ abandoned childhood bedroom are “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” by Edward Gorey (1963), “Strega Nona” by Tomie dePaola (1975), the “George and Martha” series by James Marshall (1972 to 1988) and several by Maurice Sendak, including “Where the Wild Things Are” (1963) and “In the Night Kitchen” (1970). Also still extant is “The Runaway Bunny” (1942) by Margaret Wise Brown; her “Goodnight Moon” (1947) would be there, too, if it hadn’t long since disintegrated, from overuse, into a pile of dark green dust.

These books are connected not merely by having found favor in our family — and probably yours; in various configurations and collections, “Frog and Toad” still sells more than 500,000 copies a year. Nor is it just their hushed contemplation of aloneness and connection that links them. It’s also that all of their authors were gay. (Tomie dePaola, at 84 the only one living, still is.)

The whole article by Jesse Green is well-worth reading!

As a queer children's book creator myself, reading this felt like a song of my tribe-within-a-tribe, and for that I'm grateful.

The light in me recognizes and acknowledges the light in you,
Lee

Front Porch Tales & North Country Whoppers: Folk Tales, one of which stars a Gay Couple

Front Porch Tales & North Country Whoppers by Tomie dePaola

A very sweet book with some hysterical stories, including one in particular that I had the opportunity to ask Tomie about.  I had the great opportunity to interview Tomie for the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators in honor of Tomie's winning The Society of Illustrators' Lifetime Achievement Award.  It's a three part interview - one, two, three, and here's an excerpt from where we discussed Front Porch Tales:

Lee:  Yeah.  So your Story “Settin” in your folk-tale compilation “Front Porch Tales and North Country Whoppers” has two really unexpected elements – one was that fish-out-of-water experience of the couple of non-New-Hampshire natives experiencing an authentic “Settin," which totally cracked me up.

Tomie:  That's a true story!

Lee:  And then that the couple are “two young fellas livin’ in an old fahmhouse out theyah on the Greendale Road.” 

Tomie:  That's right.  I could show you the farmhouse tomorrow if you come up. (Laughs)

Lee:  Is that a gay couple?  Or did you intend to leave it up to the reader to decide who they are to each other?

Tomie:  Actually, we didn't know we were gay at the time.  We were both, we were living in this farmhouse because we had a spiritual ideal, we were going to become - this was a very popular thing in the far-out Catholic Church in the 50's - it was called a Lay Institute, I think.  We met in a monastery, and we wanted to have kind of like a little, simple monastery.  And we had no idea that we were... I mean, I knew I was gay, but Jack, he was older than I was and he didn't know he was gay.  And we didn't live a gay life, we lived a life of two friends.  And that actually happened, that whole thing of sitting there with no one saying a word!  (Laughs.)

Lee:  That hysterical.  For me, as a reader looking at it, I got really excited.   I was like, 'wow, it's a gay couple in this great story, and it's not really about their being gay, it's just this hysterical story.'

Tomie:  That's actually what it is, yeah.  And it was very interesting, because it wasn't that long after that we both realized that oh, wait a minute.  This is more than a religious experience here, our living together.  But talk about being accepted...  Jack and I were terribly accepted in this little village in Western Vermont.  People loved us.  They called us 'the two fellas,' you know?  So I guess, if you don't walk down the street in a dress, you're all right.

Lee:  We'll get the world to where people can walk down the street wearing whatever they want.

Tomie:  Yeah. That's right.  Exactly.  You can in Vermont now. Vermont was one of the first New England states to legalize Gay Marriage, you know?

Lee:  Yeah, that's terrific.

Tomie:  Yeah!

It was very exciting for me to see this sweet and funny anthology of stories for children include a gay couple.  

And it's great to know that this GIANT in the world of children's books is openly gay.  Tomie also has eight books (so far) in his wonderful autobiographical chapter book series, 26 Fairmount Avenue.

The first book in the series

It's lovely to read them knowing that the little boy in these books grows up to be a man who fell in love with another man... like me.

It's certainly a book I wish I had read when I was a child.  And now, I read them for my inner child!

I hope you will, too.

Namaste,
Lee