Rabbit Weddings, Animal Collectives, and the Potentialities of Perverse Reading: Children’s Literature and Queer Worldmaking in A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the queer and youth worldmaking frameworks implemented in Jill Twiss and E. G. Keller’s A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a satirical picture book presented by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Both a critique of Mike Pence’s history of antiqueer politics and an exploration of matters such as democracy, queer kinship, and same-sex marriage, Marlon Bundo has been approached both as an effective critique of the current administration and as a “tired” political satire. This discussion explores the picture book’s ideological frameworks through the implementation of “perverse” forms of reading. It further highlights how Marlon Bundo connects to a history of children’s picture books aimed at critiquing conservative perspectives towards marriage, and demonstrates how the book is queerer and more generative than it may seem on the surface. Through an exploration of the picture book’s queer dynamics and its stance on notions such as difference, kinship, and collectivity, readers can better appreciate Marlon Bundo’s queerness regardless of its normative ending, and more effectively understand how this text partakes in a queer worldmaking project, in that it creates affinities and forms of kinship that traverse the boundaries of species, age, and readership.