Please note: while comments on this post continue to be welcome, the giveaway is now over.
Leslea Newman, of Heather Has Two Mommies fame, has recently published a new picture book, Donovan’s Big Day, a delightful story about the day a little boy’s two moms get married.
Told from Donovan’s perspective, the book is beautifully written for the 4-to-8-year-old set, with sweet, cheerful drawings by Mike Dutton. It builds suspense from the moment Donovan wakes up to the culmination of his big day, and manages to convey Donovan’s nervousness, seriousness, and joy to the reader. As I read:
When the tall grown-up in the long black robe said, “I now pronounce you wife and wife,” Donovan threw his arms around his mothers while everyone clapped their hands and stamped their feet and whooped and whistled and hollered, “Hooray!”
I cried. I cried again the second time I read the book, and the third, and every time I’ve read it since, including when I heard my son read it to my daughter.
Donovan’s Big Day isn’t just for kids with same-sex parents—it’s a book for all children. Despite the political life of The Issue of Gay Marriage, at its heart gay marriage is simply marriage, the joining of two people who love each other. Donovan’s New Day is not about politics or strife, but simply what it’s like for a child to witness and participate in one of the most purely wonderful moments in a family’s life. Leslea wrote the book after watching gay and lesbian couples get married on May 17, 2004, the first day same-sex marriage was legal in her home state of Massachusetts. “There were many, many children present that day,” she said, “children of those couples, children as bystanders…participating in all the joy.”
Every child should get to read this book, or have it read to them by their teary-eyed parents.
(And by the way, I can hardly believe Leslea has written yet another book. Three months ago I reviewed her then-new board books Mommy, Mama, and Me, and Daddy, Papa, and Me, both of which you’ll want to give to every toddler you know. She is a prolific writer, penning not only picture books but middle-grade and teen novels, and, for adults, fiction, non-fiction, humor, short stories, and poetry. It’s worth poking around her website to learn more.)
Leslea was kind enough to send me an autographed copy of Donovan’s Big Day to give away to one of you. I invite you to enter for a chance to win this hardcover book by commenting on this post below (if you’ve received this review in your email box, just click on the title of the post and you’ll be taken to my blog, where you can enter a comment). You’ll need to either leave your email address in your comment or friend me on facebook so I can find you if you’re the winner.
Thank you, Leslea—for giving away this book to one of my readers, for writing this book, and for all you do to make this world a more wonderful, joyful place.
Leslea does it again!
One of the most important women in our life, my kids “kai mah” (a kind of a godmother, but not in the christian way as it happens), will hopefully find someone to marry. This book sounds so sweet and amazing!
Thank goodness we have books like these to raise consciousness! I can’t wait to show it to my kids.
Sounds like another great book by Leslea Newman! Can’t wait to get it for my son.
marty.brown@alumni.unc.edu
I’d love to win! I friended you on Facebook
I’m tearing up just reading your review… I can’t wait to read Ms. Newman’s new book with my daughter, whose Mommy and Mama will be getting married via Civil Union in Illinois next month.
I am looking forward to sharing this book with my kids, who have two uncles legally married to each other in CA. As they get older, they’re finding that we have friends who’s moms have a same sex partner and that their uncles are not all that unusual after all. Leslea’s books are not just wonderful, but very important to all people.
This is amazing!!! I need this book! It would be one of those books passed down from generation to generation so show the family how brave some mommies are to be themselves and to show how strong they were. What a beautiful thing.
Twentyish years ago I met Leslea at my college where she was giving a reading. She was one of the only out-lesbian writers then who was gaining in mainstream name recognition for Heather Has Two Mommies, and she was as much a lovely, gracious and passionately articulate activist then as she is now. Glad the books keep coming!
Awesome. Looks like a great book!
I’d love to donate it to my school’s library!!
Looks like a great book for my three-yr-old twins!
I’m really looking forward to reading Leslea’s book. It sounds fabulous and amazing! Thank you!
More more books from more authors please! Everytime I read one of Leslea’s great books I think, can’t there be more books like these? More variety, more new-traditional (as opposed to non-traditional) families!
(sent facebook request)
I read this today over at Trinity’s blog (http://andtherewerethreeinthefamily.blogspot.com/2011/06/sometimes-you-wanna-go-where-everybody.html).
I wanted to come over and read your thoughts on it. I am framing my own and love to consider yours as a guide.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/27/storm-gender-debate-rages_n_868131.html
PS – I would love to be considered for the book. We loved Mommy, Momma and Me.
As a long time infertility fighter, my daughter and donor egg baby on the way will be shown to love and respect all families – no matter how they are made, how they look, or who makes up the members.
It is a big job and I want all the help I can get.
This is awesome! She is such a moving writer… I DO hope plenty of children–not just kids of liberal parents who are already instilling these values–get their hands on this. It looks fantastic!
OOHHHHHHH! I want this!
great blog and fabulous review. So happy both writers of the book and blog are adding so much to our culture and our kids lives. Thanks.
We just visited our friends who are a family of 2 mommies and 2 toddlers. When we returned home my 4th old son said to my husband “I would like 2 mommies too”. My husbands reply was, “sure ask your mommy”