Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative

Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative is a collection of fifty full-color drawings based on my memories of growing up "different". All along the way of development, I was told I was doing it wrong. Like all gay or creative kids, I knew I was different from the others and they knew it too. I wanted to create this book to help illustrate those moments, but also to help the reader remember their own stories. I wasn't the only little boy who put on something fun and tried to entertain their parent's guests, I'm sure of it. If you grew up with a different point of view, this book is for you. Flip the pages and watch Danny grow from birth to eighteen in fifty drawings. Each page a step in personal discovery. When I grew up there was no help for me. There was no one telling me that I was fine just as I am. I needed to make sure that the adult me sent out the word that you are not only fine but beautiful. Be you. It's your life and the people who love you deserve to know you not the person you play. If you have someone in your life who doesn't fit the mold, I hope this book helps you to see it's OK to be different. Enjoy Danny's growing up. I did! —Dan Crowley, Author & Artist

Praise for Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative

"Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative, shows us what it means to grow up heart-open and human. But few saw us that way when we were kids.  So Danny, with his winsome humor-filled drawings, reminds us of those wonder years, as we struggled to find our place under the rainbow. I feel like I am coming home again, but this time, in a happy and healed way. Bravo, Danny!   Shine on!! —Christopher Radko, award-winning designer

"Dan Crowley explores with humor and empathy all the various childhood pitfalls in growing up gay in a less than fabulous world. Many were right out of my childhood, such as spotting a doll you always wanted in the bedroom of a friend's sister. So much of it hit  home." —Mel Odom, Artist

"Dan Crowley's book, Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative is a wonderful thing.  It speaks to children who may need to know they're not different and that their lives are not a mistake.  Youngsters who are curious about their own sexuality before even knowing what that word means.  And it speaks in a way their straight parents may be unable to because they don't have the words nor the experiences.  It does so in a sweet, gentle, and funny way.  And adults will learn, too; about same-sex relationships from a "knowing" point of view.  This book is a gift in every sense of the word."
—Steve Kmetko, award-winning journalist

"Dan Crowley has a natural gift for homily, for taking lived experience and expressing stories of love and gratitude, inspiration and grace. He also has a silly, sweet (and slightly wicked) sense of humor. Danny, Growing Up Gay & Creative combines personal and universal stories about growing up gay — the good, the bad, and the embarrassing — and reminds us it's all worth it, if only we will persevere." —Tom Bachtel, Illustrator, and Caricaturist, Longtime Illustrator fo the New Yorker's Talk of the Town