The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books

by Jennifer Miller

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496839992
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	05/23/2022
Series:	Children's Literature Association Series
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Miller is lecturer of English at the University of Texas at Arlington. She researches LGBTQ+ children's picture books, digital culture, and subcultures. She is author of The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+ Children's Picture Books, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Editorial Reviews

02/01/2023

This offering presents an in-depth analysis of over 40 years of children's books. Rooted in a cultural studies perspective, Miller has compiled an archive of over 150 books published between 1972 and 2018, which is included in the appendix of this book. Miller's deep exploration of this archive includes attention to dominant and shifting tropes in LGBTQIA+ texts for children, as well as a call for others to continue to approach LGBTQIA+ picture books with what she terms "critical optimism" to propel scholarship and understanding moving forward. It discusses the power that these works have in world-making and identity-forming. Over 15 black-and-white images and five charts break up the text. VERDICT Recommended for all academic shelves serving adolescent literature scholars.—Jen McConnel

School Library Journal

Jennifer Miller's The Transformative Potential of LGBTQ+Children's Picture Books is an important contribution to the growing scholarship on LGBTQ+children's literature and provides a critical, loving portrait of the development of LGBTQ+picture books specifically. '--Emily S. Meixner "Journal of LGBT Youth"

Recommended for all academic shelves serving adolescent literature scholars.--Jen McConnel "School Library Journal"

Jennifer Miller combines deft, close reading with a kind of macroanalysis, identifying shifting trends and persistent tropes across the corpus. Miller also thinks about the networks of production, circulation, and consumption. Because hers is the most comprehensive treatment yet, it is also the most nuanced and persuasive. Practicing what she calls 'critical optimism, ' Miller holds that too often we underappreciate or dismiss as 'homonormative' earlier materials that did important work in their moment. I learned so much reading this book--about early queer picture book publishing initiatives, for instance, and about the depiction of families and communities, tomboys and sissies/pink boys, and trans and nonbinary kids. Picture book nonfiction is also part of Miller's story. Especially moving is Miller's insistence that LGBTQ+ picture books are, at heart, acts of queer love and worldmaking. A vital (even urgent) book for the field and beyond.--Kenneth Kidd, professor of English at University of Florida

From the Publisher