Heather Has Two Mommies (A New Look and a New Cover)

A twenty-five year milestone has been reached in the telling of a sweet children's book called "Heather Has Two Mommies. Those many years ago, no one wanted to publish the book, but that did not stop its author, Leslea Newman. The book's topic was a cultural and legal flash point 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

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I don't specifically say that they're married but they are.  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.

"Every step I was educating people about our family because there was nothing else," recalled Jacobson. "If I hadn't done it somebody else would have found an author. The book needed to happen."

Newman, a full-time writer and poet at the time, chronicles Heather's love of all things "two," including her moms, one a doctor and the other a carpenter. When Heather joins a home-based play group — changed to "school" in the new version — she is saddened when teacher Molly reads the children a story at nap time focused on a daddy.

Original Cover

As the children chime in with their fathers' occupations, Heather bemoans, "I don't have a daddy," when asked what hers does for a living. The original story has her tearing up as she wonders if any other family looks like hers. The update has the children chiming in with the work of their mommies AND daddies, and it eliminates Heather's tears.

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

After I wrote the book I sent it to many, many publishers. Small presses, large presses. Children's book presses told me to try lesbian presses. Lesbian presses told me to try children's book presses. Nobody was really interested.

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 endeavour mostly from $10 donations, promising each contributor a copy from the 4,000 they printed up.