Picture an eager Year 3 pupil, cross-legged on a carpet. Now picture a strapping Year 8 making their first of many regrettable haircut decisions.
That's a lot of growing up. Small wonder that books for 8-12s are often those we hold dearest: Narnia, Hogwarts, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Charlotte's Web, Northern Lights. They hold our hands through that vast transition.
"But those children are too young to think about icky gay stuff!" No, they aren't. They know what love is. From infancy kids read about mummies and daddies without pausing to analyse what they get up to between the sheets. Children of same-sex parents need to see their families on the page; so do their friends. And – newsflash – not all kids will be straight or cisgender themselves. This is the age when they may begin anxiously wondering where they fit. And the last place any child should feel isolated, unwelcome or afraid is the library.
My Pea's Book series includes a prominent set of same-sex parents, the Paget-Skidelskys next door. They aren't an issue, or a problem; they're a family, as daft and wise and funny as all the rest. This kind of casual inclusion is becoming more common in our post-Section 28 world but we need so much more for this age group: not only 'issue' books about bullying but genre fiction, non-fiction, comics; more books that are diverse in other ways too; more happy books. Same-sex marriage is legal in England, Scotland and Wales. Publishers, authors: we've got catching up to do.
Here's my Top Ten LGBTQ books, listed from younger to older reads.
1. The Terrible Thing That Happened to Barnaby Brocket by John Boyne
Arch wit meets whimsy in the tale of 8-year-old Barnaby, a boy uniquely untroubled by gravity. Cut loose by his appalling 'normal' parents, Barnaby floats off to meet a sequence of 'different' friends, all equally familiar with rejection (including Ethel and Marjorie, a squawky, comical but unfailingly kind old couple in a hot-air balloon). Oliver Jeffers' illustrations are a perfect match.
2. The Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow
These are the letters, notes and cunning plans of Lydia Goldblatt and Julie Graham-Chang, tween besties on a mission to infiltrate the popular clique. Inevitably their friendship strains under the pressure. This US series is light, funny, enormously appealing (although some readers may struggle with the handwriting, others will find it a huge boon that the book looks so convincingly like one they might have written and drawn themselves) - and the fact that Julie's likeable, well-drawn parents are Daddy and Papa Dad is plain but in no way an 'issue'.
3. Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman
Some might hesitate to put an AIDS story on this list: don't we want to be positive? But as David Levithan's YA Two Boys Kissing emphasises, there's a generation of young people growing up without any context for that era of fear. Aussie Colin decides HRH can cure his little bro's terminal cancer (he's that kind of lad); a chance meeting with Ted, whose partner Griff is also dying, helps him face reality. This slim volume packs an almighty wallop - and somehow manages to be hilarious and uplifting too.
4. The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams
A smart and very funny story about tolerance. Dennis likes Vogue magazine, fashion, and wearing his friend Lisa's handmade sequinned miniskirt it's about questioning the narrowness of traditional gender roles, instead of slotting a child into a category. The subplot about the nasty headmaster is an odd choice, but the hardest heart will swell at the Spartacus-style conclusion.
5. The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler
The transformation metaphor works just as well for puberty, but this warm, sweet, million-selling series is all about discovering you 'aren't quite like the other girls'. Emily's mum has given her a potent fear of water (a problem when you live on a boat) and on a school swimming trip she learns why: she's half-mermaid. Her search for her father is utterly relatable, even if most kids' absent dads don't turn out to be rebellious mermen poets imprisoned by nasty Neptune. Kessler's YA novel Read Me Like A Book - a coming-out story she's waited ten years to publish - is due in 2015.
6. Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle
'I am a freshman at the College of Sexuality and I have undecided my major... Macaroni and cheese is my favourite food - how would I know who I want to hook up with?' Everyone else seems to have decided flamboyant, Broadway-obsessive 13-year-old Nate's sexuality already, and they probably aren't wrong - but he's still working it out. This US title is pure marmite: either you fall for Kurt Hummelesque Nate Foster or not. But the voice is charming, and themes (bullying, madcap schemes to reach a dream, family troubles) are universal.
7. See You At Harry's by Jo Knowles
Twelve-year-old Fern is a gloriously recognisable stroppy tween, fastidious about dirt, angry with her family's many small failings - until almost unbearable tragedy uproots the lot. In the midst of it all is big brother Holden, gay and slowly coming out; no special snowflake, his problems (bullying; an older partner) are presented as simply another thread of the complicated family tapestry. Strong echoes of Judy Blume in this US tearjerker.
8. So Hard To Say by Alex Sanchez
Sanchez is celebrated for his YA fiction, but this dual-narrative MG is just as strong, pacy and honest. Xio is the chipper hispanic teen girl who develops a crush on Frederick; he's the white, awkward, questioning new kid at school. The Mexican culture in the Californian setting will be as unfamiliar to most British readers as it is to him, and there's joy in that collision just as much as Frederick's road to acceptance.
9. What's Up With Jody Barton? by Hayley Long
15-year-old twins Jody and Jolene have nothing in common apart from their wacky cafe-owner parents - until they both fall for the same boy. Even if you see the 'twist' coming, this is a gentle, generous read, worth including for one killer scene alone (in which one of those Big Awkward Conversations With Your Mum is all conducted from within the safety of a wifi gaming helmet).
10. Starring Kitty by Keris Stainton
Out in July, this is the optimistic, sweet, mainstream-but-not-heterosexual romance I've been wanting to read for years. Kitty's 15, but her nervy first crush on Dylan is perfect for trainee romantics 10+ and beyond. At heart this is a story about friendship and trust; any coming-out anxiety is focused on what others might say not on self-recrimination, and is handled with a light touch - but the love story has real zing. You can't help but root for these two.
