What Having Two Mommies Looks Like Now: Queer Picture Books in the Twenty-First Century

This chapter deploys three versions of Leslea Newman’s groundbreaking Heather Has Two Mommies—the original (1990), tenth anniversary (2000), and Candlewick (2015) editions—to illustrate how representations of queer characters in picture books have shifted as we proceed into the twenty-first century. The newest Heather’s most striking attribute, I argue, is how it sidelines the titular mommies at the level of both text and image, creating space for the child protagonist to take center stage while downplaying the lesbian relationship. Heather 2015 represents a noteworthy ontological shift in the trajectory of queer picture books, many of which now permit the proliferation of children’s queernesses instead of using kids as ciphers in didactic projects that seek to explain and normalize adult gay and lesbian relationships.