‘Heather Has Two Mommies’ book gets an update Cultural flashpoint

By LEANNE ITALIE

Associated Press

NEW YORK

A picture book about a girl named Heather and her two happy mommies was a cultural and legal flashpoint 25 years ago, angering conservatives over the morality of same-sex parenting and landing libraries at the center of community battles over placement in the children’s stacks.

Today, Heather — of “Heather Has Two Mommies” — has a lot more company in books for young kids about different kinds of families, but hers was out of print and seemed visually dated. That’s why creator Leslea Newman decided on a new version, updating the look of her watershed story with fresh illustrations from a new artist and tweaking the text to streamline.

There’s one big change, but you have to squint to notice: Heather’s Mama Kate and Mama Jane wear little matching rings on their marriage fingers.

“I don’t specifically say that they’re married but they are,” Newman explained from her home just outside Northampton, Massachusetts. “I don’t know where I could have smoothly inserted that into the text. That’s not what the story is about. The story is really about Heather.”

Heather was Newman’s first picture book and is certainly her most well-known. The latest edition, out this month, is from Candlewick Press, with illustrations by Laura Cornell replacing those of Diana Souza.

Newman wrote the story in 1988 after a chance encounter in Northampton with Amy Jacobson, a lesbian mom who was looking for reading material that better reflected her life with her partner — now wife — and their young daughter — now grown.

The process of getting Heather published back in 1989 was a slow one.

There were about 50 turndowns. That’s why she co-published the book with a friend who had a desktop printing business. The two found an illustrator and financed the endeavor mostly from $10 donations, promising each contributor a copy from the 4,000 they printed up.

Soon, writer and businessman Sasha Alyson came knocking. He had just put out another picture book, “Daddy’s Roommate,” about a divorced father who lives with his same-sex partner, when he spotted Heather in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, bookshop and offered to take it on.

Heather quickly took off and the repercussions — for both Newman’s book and “Daddy’s Roommate” by Michael Willhoite — were big.

Opposition to the books in New York City, primarily among members of one local school board in Queens, contributed to the downfall of schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez. He had defended them as optional reading for elementary school classrooms in a broader “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum intended to encourage teachers to better embrace diversity.

Both books landed at the center of a federal court battle in Wichita Falls, Texas, after Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the First Baptist Church, waved them around during a sermon on “Sodom and Gomorrah” and blasted them as anti-God and unsuitable for children.

Opponents took to checking the books out of the local library without return, only to have supporters drop off new copies for loan. The city council, on a 4-3 vote, decided to take the issue to those with valid library cards, allowing for 300 to demand the books be moved from the children’s section to an adult shelf. A judge deemed the effort unconstitutional and the city didn’t appeal.