Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kelly Blewett retraces a fragment of the long-needed queer history of children books:
Nordstrom was also queer. Although it seems she rarely mixed her private life with her professional one, a number of the most famous writers whom she published were queer, too, including Brown, Fitzhugh, and Sendak. None of these writers identified themselves as specifically gay writers (in fact, Sendak waited to reveal his own sexuality until his parents were dead), yet the pattern is striking. “There’s a silenced history,” writes children’s literature historian Philip Nel, of “the many prominent children’s literature authors who were GLBTQ.” He concludes, “Someone should write a book.”
