Children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies has been updated to reflect gay marriage

By Sam Barsanti | March 17, 2015 | 12:04am

Aux Features Books

In 1989, Lesléa Newman published a children’s book called Heather Has Two Mommies. As indicated by the title, it’s about a girl named Heather whose parents, Kate and Jane, are lesbians. The point of the book is for kids like Heather to have a chance to see a positive depiction of a same-sex couple in picture book-form, and also to help teach other kids that they should be accepting of other kinds of families. Obviously, countless bigoted assholes over the years have been offended by the book’s suggestion that it’s good to treat other people with respect, but all of the bigoted assholes in the world weren’t enough to stop it from becoming a groundbreaking piece of children’s literature.

However, Heather Has Two Mommies has fallen out of print in recent years, so Newman is putting together a new version of the story that reflects the unstoppable wave of support that gay marriage has (finally) been receiving in America. The text of the updated version will largely be the same, but the art is being completely updated by new illustrator Laura Cornell. The most important change Cornell is making—In addition to a more modern look in general—is that Heather’s parents will now be wearing wedding rings. The new Heather Has Two Mommies is set to come out this month.