October
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Top Ten LGBTQ Books the Younger Me Desperately Needed by Dawn Betts-Green
Educators and librarians are well aware that every child and young adult needs to find themselves reflected in the pages of the books they read. For some this is more difficult to achieve than others. As an LGBTQ youth just coming out in the 90s and living in small-town, rural Alabama, I sought frantically through my library’s shelves for books that would help me understand this new part of my identity. Whether it was because they weren’t there or I just didn’t find them, I was unsuccessful, and I didn’t locate those books until I started college and discovered the wonders of my first gay bookstore. It’s my hope that someday, this will simply be an historical anecdote that no LGBTQ person can relate to, that all libraries (school and public alike) will be stocked with multitudes of relevant books for these kids.
With that end in mind, what follows is a list of ten wonderful books I only discovered as an adult or that have only recently been published. I guarantee that you know someone right now who could use one or all of these. Of course, there are many more that I could have included, and they are all wonderful as well. These ten just happen to be my own personal favorites. I think you’ll love them, but to quote every young book nerd’s hero, “you don’t have to take my word for it.”
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
Despite the fact that this was published in 1982, it took me until 2013, when I was 34 and in graduate school, to find this book. Garden, who recently passed, was a prolific author with multiple titles including LGBTQ characters; Annie is probably her most known work. It tells the story of Liza and Annie, high school students in New York City, who meet in a museum and form a fast friendship. It soon becomes clear to them that it is far more than friendship. I read this in one sitting and bawled like a baby for the sixteen-year-old me who needed this book.
Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens by Kathy Belge
Many LGBTQ teens have no one in their lives to turn to with questions about the many new thoughts, feelings, and issues they experience when coming out (both to themselves and the world). Belke’s book offers this information about coming out, life in general, and some LGBTQ history.
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson
This is one of my favorite picture books of all time! Richardson tells the true story of a pair of male penguins that form a family and raise a chick—an excellent tale of how families are all different and wonderful in their own ways.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
In the news recently because of censorship challenges, Danforth’s book gives us a vision of a young lesbian dealing with family rejection of her identity and the horrifying experience of Christian gay-reparative therapy.
The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to their Younger Selves edited by Sarah Moon
Sixty-three LGBTQ authors contributed to this amazing anthology. Every section of the spectrum you can imagine is covered in these letters to their younger, confused, and sometimes frightened selves.
Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen
A picture book about gay marriage starring guinea pigs…how could you go wrong?! What I love most about this book is that you aren’t even aware that it’s a gay wedding until over halfway through the story. It’s just about family and love, and that is awesome.
10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert
Bailey dreams of beautiful dresses, but he’s a boy! Ewert’s book is an excellent story of being true to who you are, regardless of others’ expectations.
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Even though the main character’s world seems more fantasy than reality, the beauty of this book is that the focus isn’t Paul’s coming out or identity crisis, it’s the messiness of teenage relationships and friendships and figuring out how to navigate them.
The Legend of Bold Riley by Leia Wethington
I love graphic novels and comics, and finding good LGBTQ representations in them is sort of a hobby. Like Levithan’s book, this one’s most endearing quality to me is that Riley being a lesbian just is not a big deal. It’s who she is, and that’s all there is to it.
This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman
Finishing out this list is the most appropriate one for October—it is LGBTQ History Month, after all. This shiny new picture book is all about a Pride celebration and includes LGBTQ history as well as resources for parents and other adults on explaining sexual orientation and related topics to children.
Dawn Betts-Green is a first-year doctoral student in Library and Information Science at Florida State. If you couldn’t tell from the post, she’s primarily interested in studying LGBTQ youth and LGBTQ children’s and YA collections in libraries, mainly in the rural South, although intellectual freedom is a close and dear second. When she’s not wading through classwork and actually has time, she’s reading, gaming, or embroidering strange things. Though she’s the most sporadic and unscheduled poster in history, she blogs as obsessivecompulsivedawn.blogspot.com and dinosaurinthelibrary.blogspot.com and tweets as @librarydino.
Nerdy Book Club 
Thanks for this wonderful list. Our library has some, but I’ll share the others, too. I read The Letter Q a few years ago, & it has been a good one, showing that we can’t lump everyone into the same experiences, & even in the LGBTQ world, each has a unique story. Look for Gracefully Grayson, by Ami Polonsky, coming in November-wonderful story!
Another title you might want to consider for your list is In Our Mother’s House by Patricia Polacco. http://www.patriciapolacco.com/books/in_house/index.html
Thanks for this list. There a few I didn’t know about. One of my favourite picture books is Donovan’s Big Day by Leslea Newman. After reading it to a group of children, one of the boys came up to me afterwards to tell me he had been the ring bearer at his mothers’ wedding.
Also Tim Federle’s Nate books! ❤️💖💛💚💙💜
I needed Freakboy by Kristin Elizabeth Clark. I know a few of my students who needed that one as well. Amazing novel in verse.
Thank you for this post. I, too, wish I had these books as I child. I don’t think it would have taken me so long to come out had I been read books like these in school. And that’s just it, we never know who these books will help. For some children, they might truly be life changing. And for those kids who will not see themselves reflected as the gay characters in these books, they will find themselves in those who reach out to love and accept these gay characters for who they are. The world needs more lists like this one. Thank you for writing this list and for writing it so well.
What a great collection. Have only read a few listed.
Life is so different today. My daughter’s 8th grade class read various stories from Am I Blue? Coming Out from the Silence ! I’d also add Keeping You a Secret and the just released Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan!
A must-read: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.
Trust me. Great book! Well-written!
How about Hero, by Perry Moore? Gay teen superhero–very fun read.
I recommend a book by Jim West called Libellus de Numeros (The Book of Math) that my 11-year-old daughter just finished reading. The story is about Alex, a young precocious girl, who mysteriously gets transported to a strange world where Latin and Math combine in formulas and equations with magical effects. With a cruel council leading the only safe city of its kind in this world, she will have to prove her worth to stay as well as help this city as it is the target for two evil wizards who seek to destroy the city and its ruling council. To help the city and also get back home, she will need the help of the greatest mathematician of all time, Archimedes. In a world where math is magic, Alex wishes she paid more attention in math class.
A Goodread 5-star review said:
“The storyline inspires a hunger for knowledge and a ‘can do’ attitude – a strong message of empowerment for young readers. I’m sure that this book will be interesting to read for both, boys and girls, as well as adult readers. Libellus de Numeros means ‘Book of Numbers’ and it’s a magical textbook in the story. Math and science are wonderfully incorporated into a captivating plot: Latin and math are presented as exciting tools to make ‘magic’ and while Latin is often used as a language of magic the addition of math is definitely a fresh approach.
“The main heroine Alex is a very relatable character for young people, especially girls. I love that she has her flaws and goes through struggles all too familiar to a lot of young people. Alex is an authentic female role model – a very courageous girl, who is not afraid to stand up for herself and others and who is able to learn fast how to use knowledge to her best advantage.
“She can definitely do everything that boys can and I find this to be a very powerful message that is needed in our modern society. Furthermore, it was a pleasure to read through the pages of a well-formatted eBook. Highly recommended!”