LGBTQ history, in verse
9 LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ books for National Poetry Month April is National Poetry Month, and these recent books in verse for young readers prove that LGBTQ-inclusive titles can be as beautiful and powerful as any today.
The first three are picture books; the rest are middle grade and up. Queer and Fearless: Poems Celebrating the Lives of LGBTQ+ Heroes, by Rob Sanders, illustrated by Harry Woodgate (Penguin), offers biographical portraits of 17 historical and contemporary LGBTQ political and social activists.
Sanders carefully matches various poetic forms with his subjects, for example, deploying the march-like beat of rhyming couplets for the poem about Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1963 March on Washington.
A few paragraphs of prose on each figure add informational substance to the emotional connections that the poems create. Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues: The Extraordinary Life of James Baldwin, by Michelle Meadows, illustrated by Jamiel Law (HarperCollins), is a lyrical biography of Baldwin, capturing something of the rhythm of his work in its blank verse and honoring both his Black and gay identities.
