We're Here, We're Queer, But We're Just Like Heterosexuals: A Cultural Studies Analysis of Lesbian Themed Children's Books (Critical Essay‪)‬

In the heartwarming children's picture book, Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman, the main character Heather must grapple with the fact that her family may be different from her playmates' because she has two mommies but she does not have a daddy. The story begins rather quaintly with a description of her home "with the big apple tree in the front yard and the tall grass in the backyard." Mama Kate and Mama Jane "were friends for a long long time." After they finally fell in love, they decided they wanted to have a baby. The family seems perfect. "On sunny days they go to the park. On rainy days they stay inside and bake cookies." At Heather's playgroup, she learns that some other children have daddies. "Heather feels sad and begins to cry." The teacher decides to have every child draw a picture of his or her family so that Heather can see that families come in all types of configurations. By the end of the story, we are taught the lesson that "it doesn't matter how many mommies or daddies your family has." What Newman leaves out, however, is that it does matter how many mommies or daddies you have. It matters so much, in fact, that the illustrator of Newman's book was careful to portray Mama Kate and Mama Jane as nothing more than good friends. It matters so much that even Newman's "picture-perfect" portrayal of a lesbian family did not deter her book from being banned from various schools and libraries. In fact, Heather Has Two Mommies is number eleven on the American Library Association's "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000."