The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books by Jennifer Miller

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books by Jennifer Miller Jessica Lussier (bio) The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books. By Jennifer Miller. University Press of Mississippi, 2022. Jennifer Miller's The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books provides a foundational entry-point into the study of the field. Working from a corpus of over 150 English-language picture books from the 1970s to 2018, Miller chronicles the evolution of LGBTQ+ topics and themes over time. While many critics have criticized LGBTQ+ children's picture books for being homonormative and conservative (often upholding dominant social institutions instead of consciously dismantling them), [End Page 426] Miller intentionally chooses to view these texts through the lens of critical optimism, highlighting the transformative potential of these texts to "demand LGBTQ+ visibility and challenge stigma associated with LGBTQ+ identities and experiences" (27). Chapter 1, "The Politics of LGBTQ+ Children's Literature," serves as the introduction to Miller's work, outlining the existing scholarship surrounding LGBTQ+ children's picture books, her methodology, and critical influences. Miller affirms the importance of a thorough, comprehensive archive, arguing that too many scholars make too general conclusions from too limited data sets—something that she, herself, was guilty of and wished to correct in this work (18). In drawing from such a large archive, Miller analyzes the selected works from a more optimistic place, positioning them within their historical contexts and teasing out the ways that even very homonormative works can prompt societal transformation and change. Chapter 2, "A Genealogy of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books: The Early Years," charts the development of LGBTQ+ children's picture books over the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. This general overview of common tropes and themes provides a foundation for their specific exploration in later chapters. Miller identifies two clusters of tropes during these years: first, the tropes of the "sissy boy," queer exceptionalism, and "boy-meets-skirt"; and second, the emergence of the tropes of "virtually normal" lesbian- and gay-parented families, family diversity, and the gay uncle (38). The persistence and evolution of these tropes across these three decades (and into the 2000s and 2010s) reflect dominant cultural understandings and ways of being. Chapter 3, "Virtually Normal: Lesbian and Gay Grown-Ups in Children's Picture Books," examines the evolution of this trope in post-2000s picture books. Miller notes the limiting tendency of these texts to generally only feature LGBTQ+ adults in a familial role or when exceptional enough to be featured in a biography, subsuming LGBTQ+ adults into a homonormative framework and making them seem "just like" heterosexual couples (78). Yet, these characters still offer transformative potential in their very visibility, making LGBTQ+ lives available and imaginable to young readers. Chapter 4, "Beyond the Sissy Boy: Pink Boys and Tomboys," dives into the transformation of the "sissy boy" trope first found in pre-2000 picture books. The "sissy boy" is characterized by an association and like of feminine objects and activities. These desires are often viewed with embarrassment or anger by the adult figures, but over time, the embarrassment has shifted away from the sissy boy and onto the policing figure, making them seem silly or out of line. Most recently, the sissy boy has transformed into the "pink boy," who also evinces a desire for more feminine objects, such as wearing dresses, but with a crucial distinction: to cast the desired objects as gender neutral (109). While this focus does render the intricacies of gender expression more banal, Miller recognizes the manners in which these [End Page 427] texts also promote flexible definitions of gender and gender expression. Chapter 5, "Queer Youth and Gender: Representing Transgender, Nonbinary, Gender-Creative, and Gender-Free Youth," investigates trans and nonbinary gender expressions in LGTBQ+ children's picture books. These texts center around the importance of resilience and staying true to oneself, building upon the characterization of sissy boys, pink boys, and tomboys in the previous chapter. Like with pink boys, sissy boys, and tomboys, the depiction of transgender characters emphasizes the role of the supportive nuclear family—to the exclusion of a wider queer community. While this depiction may be accurate for many...