As a full-time nanny who also babysits for a ton of families on a regular basis, I spend a lot of time reading children's books. As a full-time queer, I spend a lot of time pushing my gay agenda on children. (I will always offer boys a pink sippy cup first. Always.) If you also want to push your gay agenda on the children in your life, or just spend some quality time with them, why not check out some queer-themed picture books?
There are tons of children's books out there about same-sex parents, trans issues, gender nonconforming children, and simply rejecting traditional gender roles. To help you navigate the world of queer children's books, I checked a few out from my local library.
Of course, I can review children's books all I want, but being a kind-of-grown-up means my opinions don't matter that much, so I enlisted some of my favorite children to help. Violet is six years old and was very enthusiastic about her new role as a literary critic. Her sister, Clementine, is three and was very enthusiastic about the one book with a lot of pink in it and also running around the living room like a crazy person. The three of us read and reviewed three books: My Princess Boy, Heather Has Two Mommies, and Operation Marriage.
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2013.