(GMP was a UK publisher with US distribution.)Īnd the well-known delightful (if frequently banned or challenged) picture book King & King by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland was originally published in 2000 in the Netherlands, before being released in English by Tricycle in 2002. The very first LGBT picture book that I know if is Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin written by Susanne Bösche, with photos by Andreas Hansen, published in Denmark in 1981, and published by the Gay Men's Press in 1983 in a translation by Louis Mackay. (And my own board books were originally written & published in Spanish, so the English editions are later self-translations.) But of course, it is too early for any of their homegrown titles or the translations they plan to publish to be present at the fair, and it is much harder for people who are both "floating" to encounter one another than it is to wander by and browse the titles displayed at a stand with its physical presence.īetsy's observation, though, made me go back to my own bookshelves, because historically, many of the early picture books with LGBTQ content that were published in the US were in fact translations. While there has certainly been an increase of titles being published in the English speaking world in recent years, even if focused more heavily on titles for older readers (middle grade and YA) which are not always as immediately visible on stands at the bookfairs, I think that part of the problem behind the absence Betsy noted is economic: a lot of the independent publishers around the world who are indeed publishing these titles are either not attending the fair and/or do not have a stand of their own, thus making discoverability part of the problem.įor instance, at Bologna were the two women behind a nascent publishing project in Cyprus to focus on gender positive children's books, FylAnagnosia, who are still in the fundraising stage.
In her coverage for School Library Journal of the most recent Bologna Book Fair, Betsy Bird observed a general lack of titles with visible LGBT content from or in other languages, with the exception of my two rainbow family board books illustrated by Elīna Brasliņa, Bedtime, Not Playtime! and Early One Morning, published by Orca in English & French for the US & Canada (and in 35 other languages around the world):
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