Reflection on Collection as a Set

The books I chose to critically review belong to the underrepresented group of the GLBT community. Besides having once been questioned and banned for being controversial, one thing that all three of my picture books have in common is that they are about children growing up with gay or lesbian parents. Molly’s Family and Heather Has Two Mommies are about a girl being raised by lesbian parents. Daddy’s Roommate is about a boy growing up with a gay father. I believe that these three picture books are meant to teach children of different family structures and to help children find themselves as characters in the book. When researching GLBT picture books I found that the majority of them were focused on gay or lesbian parents. At a young age, children may or may not know about homosexuality, and I believe that introducing these books to them early on will help children from seeing homosexuality as taboo. I also found that picture books including this issue was very difficult to find. There are only about five or six that librarians had on the shelves, the others I had to order and really look for. This shows that the issue of homosexuality is kept hidden from children and that many parents or librarians are unwilling to address it.

The fourth book I chose, Geography Club, is a young adult novel. This novel is not about a child growing up with GLBT parents, but about the main characters themselves being gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgendered. When researching GLBT young adult novels I found that the majority of them were about the main characters being direct insiders to the group. I think this is valuable because as children mature and choose novels for themselves, it is important for them to have something or someone to connect to, even if this may be the characters in books. I also found that unlike picture books, GLBT young adult novels were easy to find. I feel that more people are willing to address this issue with adolescents who can make up their own mind, than they are with children.

All of the books in this collection are accurate portrayals of members of the GLBT community, however not all of the books are written by insiders. The authors of Geography Club, Molly’s Family and Heather Has Two Mommies are insiders to the GLBT group, while the author of Daddy’s Roommate is an informed outsider to this group. I find this to be valuable because as a teacher it is our job to be unbiased and get perspectives from both sides. Choosing literature that is written by two different groups allows us to find different stereotypes or themes we may have missed. This can also introduce to children that diverse topics, such as GLBT can be accepted and learned about by not only the group it pertains to, but also to outsiders of the group.

I chose to research GLBT literature because I feel that this topic is often overlooked because it is more “invisible” than things such as race or ethnicity. Many times, teachers may have no idea that one of their children is gay or lesbian. It is not something people can visibly see, and therefore it may be much more painful for children to keep locked inside. Choosing GLBT literature will allow these children to be able to relate to characters. Whether we know we have GLBT children in our classrooms or not, we do not want children to miss out on seeing themselves in literature and to miss the feeling of not being alone.