If you look at the Nosy Crow logo at the top and bottom of our webpage, on our social media accounts, and, if we write to you, on our email signatures, you’ll spot that the dark grey of the crow’s body has been transformed into the colours of the progress pride flag: black, brown, pale pink, pale blue, white, red, orange, yellow, green, darker blue and purple. This is because June is pride month.
Several of our Nosy Crow colleagues are part of the LGBTQ+ community, and several of our authors and illustrators are too. Creating a rainbow crow is a small way of showing our recognition of and support for them all, for the printers, distributors, publishers outside the UK, retail workers, librarians, teachers and children’s carers who buy and who help us make and distribute our books and who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, and for the LGBTQ+ community in general.
We are a children’s publisher, and not many of our books directly address the joys and challenges of an LGBTQ+ identity, but we are proud to publish some books that include explicitly LGBTQ+ characters.
Earlier this year, we published Making a Baby: An Inclusive Guide to How Every Family Begins by Rachel Greener, illustrated by Clare Owen. Described in one of the five-star reviews on Amazon as “just incredibly perfect in every way!”, we made sure, among other things, that the book distinguishes between sex and gender, included same sex couples, and dealt with surrogacy. Last month, we published Otherland by Louie Stowell, author of the Dragon in the Library trilogy, in which we find a mention that our protagonists’ fairy godmother Mab is locked in conflict with Queen Gloriana, in part because Gloriana is her ex (and Louie will be writing for our blog later this week on the importance of LGBTQ+ representation in children’s fiction). And in August, we publish Adam-2 by Alastair Chisholm, whose first novel, Orion Lost, is currently shortlisted for the 2021 Waterstone’s Book Prize. In Adam-2, one of the central characters is Linden, who is non-binary, with preferred pronouns ze and hir.
Happy Pride month.
