In The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books, Jennifer Miller identifies an archive of over 150 English-language children’s picture books that explicitly represent LGBTQ+ identities, expressions, and issues. This archive is then analyzed to explore the evolution of LGBTQ+ characters and content from the 1970s to the present. Miller describes dominant tropes that emerge in the field to analyze historical shifts in representational practices, which she suggests parallel larger sociocultural shifts in the visibility of LGBTQ+ identities. Additionally, Miller considers material constraints and possibilities affecting the production, distribution, and consumption of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books from the 1970s to the present. This foundational work defines the field of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books thoroughly, yet accessibly. In addition to laying the groundwork for further research, The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books presents a reading lens, critical optimism, used to analyze the transformative potential of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. Many texts remain attached to heteronormative family forms and raced and classed models of success. However, by considering what these books put into the world, as well as problematic aspects of the world reproduced within them, Miller argues that LGBTQ+ children’s picture books are an essential world-making project and seek to usher in a transformed world as well as a significant historical archive that reflects material and representational shifts in dominant and subcultural understandings of gender and sexuality.

"In The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ Children's Picture Books, Jennifer Miller identifies an archive of over 150 English-language children's picture books that explicitly represent LGBTQ identities, expressions, and issues. This archive is then analyzed to explore the evolution of LGBTQ characters and content from the 1970s to the present. Miller describes dominant tropes that emerge in the field to analyze historical shifts in representational practices, which she suggests parallel larger sociocultural shifts in the visibility of LGBTQ identities. Additionally, Miller considers material constraints and possibilities affecting the production, distribution, and consumption of LGBTQ children's picture books from the 1970s to the present. This foundational work defines the field of LGBTQ children's picture books thoroughly, yet accessibly. In addition to laying the groundwork for further research, The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ Children's Picture Books presents a reading lens, critical optimism, used to analyze the transformative potential of LGBTQ children's picture books. Many texts remain attached to heteronormative family forms and raced and classed models of success. However, by considering what these books put into the world, as well as problematic aspects of the world reproduced within them, Miller argues that LGBTQ children's picture books are an essential world-making project and seek to usher in a transformed world as well as a significant historical archive that reflects material and representational shifts in dominant and subcultural understandings of gender and sexuality"--

A foundational look at the way children's books shaped views of the LGBTQ+ world

In The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books, Jennifer Miller identifies an archive of over 150 English-language children’s picture books that explicitly represent LGBTQ+ identities, expressions, and issues. This archive is then analyzed to explore the evolution of LGBTQ+ characters and content from the 1970s to the present. Miller describes dominant tropes that emerge in the field to analyze historical shifts in representational practices, which she suggests parallel larger sociocultural shifts in the visibility of LGBTQ+ identities. Additionally, Miller considers material constraints and possibilities affecting the production, distribution, and consumption of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books from the 1970s to the present. This foundational work defines the field of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books thoroughly, yet accessibly. In addition to laying the groundwork for further research, The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children’s Picture Books presents a reading lens, critical optimism, used to analyze the transformative potential of LGBTQ+ children’s picture books. Many texts remain attached to heteronormative family forms and raced and classed models of success. However, by considering what these books put into the world, as well as problematic aspects of the world reproduced within them, Miller argues that LGBTQ+ children’s picture books are an essential world-making project and seek to usher in a transformed world as well as a significant historical archive that reflects material and representational shifts in dominant and subcultural understandings of gender and sexuality.

An engaging collection of original scholarship on LGBTQ+ children's picture books

A woman deceived by her own therapist chronicles how she sought help for depression only to be manipulated by the man she came to trust with her secrets.

Recent decades have seen remarkable changes in the cultural visibility, legal status, and social acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, from positive representations of queerness in television series like The L-Word and Will & Grace, to films about queer intersectionality like Moonlight, to openly-gay and lesbian elected officials and leaders in the business community, to the end of anti-sodomy laws and marriage discrimination. With these advances have come assimilation of the queer subculture into the mainstream and, with it, loss of both some of the stigmatization of non-heteronormativity and the very cornerstones of the distinctiveness of LGBTQ+ communities, including queer neighbourhoods, bars and nightclubs, bookstores, publications, and other queer businesses. Queer couples and their children are migrating from LGBTQ+ enclaves to neighbourhoods with better schools, queer singles meet in virtual spaces rather than in bars, and LGBTQ+ bookstores and community centres, once the hub of queer communities, are closing, replaced by Amazon.com and social media. These changes raise the question of how LGBTQ+ culture is changing and whether, like many assimilated subcultures before it, it may be in fact endangered. This book examines these seismic changes, their sociological and cultural implications, reminisces about what has been lost and gained, and hints at what the future may hold for LGBTQ+ people. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality.