A Review of Gay and Lesbian Themed Early Childhood Children's Literature (Report‪)‬

William De Jean (2001) SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF THE first children's book sometime around the mid-1600s, there have been hundreds of thousands of them, but early childhood children's literature containing gay and lesbian themes is in its infancy. In 2000 Frances Ann Day published Lesbian and gay voices: An annotated bibliography and guide to literature for children and young adults. The book is a 268-page resource of 275 titles that portray honest, accurate, gay-friendly characters and themes for young people. It was a revolutionary book for gay and lesbian people who, like De Jean in his quote above, often sought visions of themselves in literature as a way towards wholeness. The lesbian poet Adrienne Rich (Maher & Tetreault, 1994, p. 1) stated: