Full Rainbow List now available

[Ian David]

Full Rainbow List now available

Rainbow Project 2008 List
Introduction

On the fortieth anniversary of the Kinsey report telling the world that glbtrq people are not alone in their feelings or experience, 25 years since the publication of the controversial Annie on My Mind, and almost 20 years after Daddy’s Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies, the Rainbow Project proudly presents its inaugural bibliography, a bibliography of current books for young readers from birth through age 18 dealing with the myriad of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or questioning issues.

For our first list, we included books with original copyrights in the U.S. for the years 2005-2007. The search for these books was eye-opening, revealing a lack of accessibility through missing subject headings and the promotion of inappropriate titles insulting to the GLBTQ population including such books as A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. The frustrations that we had in finding potential Rainbow books clearly demonstrate the vital need for this list of quality books, originally published during the current calendar year or the six months prior to that year, that validate same-gender lifestyles.

After examining more than 200 books to find the 45 on the list, we concluded that more titles are available than there were five years ago, and these books generally showed an improvement in the quality of writing. The existing material, however, is heavily weighted to the young adult audience with few books for younger readers not in high school. Also many current books paste in the GLBTQ characters in a secondary role in a weak attempt for diversity.

A major issue that GLBTQ books face is censorship. And Tango Makes Three, one of the books on this bibliography, topped the 2006 list of challenged books, according to ALA. We thank the authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers who are willing to confront these challenges and continue providing more quality books that portray GLBTQ characters in a realistic and prominent manner.

We would like to star four Rainbow Project List books, published in 2007: Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You; Julie Anne Peters, grl2grl; St. James, James, Freak Show; and Lu Vickers, Breathing Underwater. We look forward to more books of this quality for the 2009 list.

More:
http://blogs.ala.org/glbtrt.php?title=full_rainbow_list_now_available&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

[dsc]

1. wow thanks

I will be printing this for my alliance. Very helpful.

[xchrom]

2. recommend

:applause: :applause: :applause:

[hulklogan]

3. "same-gender lifestyles"?!?!

The frustrations that we had in finding potential Rainbow books clearly demonstrate the vital need for this list of quality books, originally published during the current calendar year or the six months prior to that year, that validate same-gender lifestyles.

Ummm, excuse me? Lifestyles? What is a same-gender lifestyle anyway?

It pains me to see that the ALA has yet to edit this language even after it has been pointed out to them several times on the GAY-LIBN listserv. Are they unable to edit blog posts at the ALA? Or maybe they had to get the language of the post "approved" by some straight person somewhere, and now that it has been approved it can't be changed.

That said, this list is long overdue, and should be even longer. It does point out significant gaps in the literature we provide to GLBT youth, including stories about bisexual characters and chapter books for kids who are younger than 7th grade.