The Pirate Mums

Product Information

For eight-plus, Danny Chung Does Not Do Maths (Bonnier) by Maisie Chan, illustrated by Anh Cao, features would-be artist Danny, who is excited about a promised surprise – until it turns out to be his Nai Nai from China, taking up residence in his top bunk. But there’s more to Danny’s wrinkled little grandma than meets the eye. Funny, light-hearted, and challenging racist stereotypes, Chan’s debut is a delightful celebration of intergenerational love, individual strengths and bingo. Books that specifically say that ‘families come in different shapes and sizes’ are hugely important.Todd Parr’s vibrant, bouncy The Family Book and the Donor Conception Network’s warm, straightforward My Story both spring to mind, and are enduring favourites in our house. My aim is to write books that introduce the idea of non-traditional family set ups in a more incidental way, that doesn’t immediately mark those families out as ‘other’, books that will be enjoyed for their story as much as the lesson it contains. We at Books and Bao are huge fans of Laura Kate Dale, as a video games critic, a memoirist, a podcaster, and as a transgender trailblazer. This is a great read about a little girl who helps a worried unicorn with a bit of medical know-how from her warm and supportive parents.” Dominic Arnall, Chief Executive of Just Like Us, added: “We’re so thrilled to be partnering with Jodie Lancet-Grant and Oxford University Press to bring much-needed representation and stories about LGBT+ families to more primary schools this School Diversity Week.

Jodie Lancet-Grant is a Communications Director at Pan Macmillan, a publisher of non-fiction books for adults. When Jodie’s twin daughters were three, they started noticing that their family, with two mums, was different from other people’s. Jodie decided to write a book with two mums so that her daughters could see families like theirs in picture books. These LGBTQ bedtimes stories to read right now are all glowing examples of the varied queer experiences so many of us go through. A perfect book for little ones with a new baby on the way or navigating inter-family frictions. 7. The Invisible String by Patrice Karst Ask little ones what they would do if they had an abundance of treasure. This can open a discussion and a lesson about being charitable to others. One of the most important tasks that primary school teachers have is to impart the practicalities of reading and writing – phonics and digraphs and spelling and grammar. But it’s at least as important that they also instil a love of reading in their pupils.Because whilst my children obviously know that families with two mums and two dads exist, plenty don’t. Often, families with same sex parents aren’t something that young children have seen before, either in real life, on TV or in books. The fiesty female characters are everything I want myself – and my girls – to live up to.’ Anna Whitehouse, Heart Radio DJ There are a million ways we can feel apart from our peers as we grow and work out who we are, and I know that teachers are perfectly placed to bring out that aspect of the story in the classroom. Fighting homophobia Illustrated by Carnegie medal-longlisted Lydia Corry, The Pirate Mums is about a little boy called Billy who just wishes that his family could be a little more like everyone else’s. These stories are not only important so that children with same sex parents feel included and accepted, but also because they show children who might grow up queer, that, if they want to, they can have a family, too.

This fantastic book challenges the equation that "conformity equals acceptance", celebrating instead the power of being solidly you. While Billy grapples with his own emotional landscape(shushing his mums, willing them to be "normal" and dreading peer embarrassment), the other children in the book say nothing, neither noticing nor seeming to care about his mums’ "strange" quirks. Patrice Karst wrote The Invisible String as a working single mum, looking for a way to comfort her son through the distress of nursery drop-offs. Yet the message of her book extends far beyond the context of its creation, and it has become a key text across a wide range of settings: social care, bereavement support, the prison system, the military, and fostering and adoption services. Of course, for children with same sex parents, having two mums or dads is the norm, but there is something about encountering families that look like one’s own in the public setting of a classroom that adds validation.There isn’t yet a huge array of great resources that children will enjoy to help teachers counteract centuries of homophobia – I’m hoping that The Pirate Mums can be one of them. These books, layered with shared emotional significance, serve as potent transitional objects too – pieces of Dad that Luna carries home, extending the afterglow of their time together and communicating to her deepest senses. They adorn her bedroom like talismans, reminders of his presence – the closeness of his hug – through the absence that will follow.