Cricket Media, “the world’s most awarded children’s magazine publisher” (per its website) is adding to the queer content in its publications. This April, its Spider magazine, for ages six to nine, will feature its first full-length story with LGBTQAI+ characters—but that’s just one piece of the company’s already inclusive content. Two Cricket Media editors and the story’s author, who all identify on the LGBTQAI+ spectrum, spoke with me about what the publisher is offering and why they feel it is important.

The Spider story, “The Very, Very, Very Long Hike,” by Debbie Urbanski, with illustrations by Dave Szalay, features a multiracial family with two moms and two kids. Their youngest, Edun, worries she will be bored on a long family hike to a remote cabin. Her moms manage to spark her imagination, however, and eventually Edun inspires them all.

As a queer person of color, it is very important to me that Spider shows a range of families and children.

Jestine Ware, associate editor for Spider, told me via e-mail, “As a queer person of color, it is very important to me that Spider shows a range of families and children.” At her urging, Cricket Media added a call for LGBTQAI+ content to its submissions page in 2015. No one responded, though. “I had to request a story directly,” Ware said.

She reached out to Urbanski, who had written other pieces for Spider and had worked with Ware on a story about asexuality for Cricket’s teen publication Cicada. Ware told her, “I am in desperate need of LGBTQAI+ stories that feature two moms or two dads, trans or gender non-conforming kids, adoption, and/or asexuality as a normal way of life. I want something with a strong plot that doesn’t focus mainly on the queerness, but doesn’t ignore it—normalizing queerness through incidental inclusion. I’d like the plot and characterization to be primary in the story.”

As an asexual, I know how it feels to grow up and never see myself reflected in the stories I read.

Urbanski told me she was “really interested and excited in trying to write a LGBTQIA+ story for kids,” explaining, “I’m asexual, a mom, and in a mixed orientation marriage…. As an asexual, I know how it feels to grow up and never see myself reflected in the stories I read (that’s one reason I became a writer!). I feel it’s so important that children see who they are, and who their families are, in books and magazines.”

Ware hopes this work can make a difference. “I am only one editor of one children’s magazine, but I hope that other publishers will follow my example and come to see LGBTQ inclusion as valuable and important to children’s literature,” she said.

I am only one editor of one children’s magazine, but I hope that other publishers will follow my example and come to see LGBTQ inclusion as valuable and important to children’s literature.

Ware’s peers at Cricket Media are already on board. Their flagship Cricket magazine for tweens in January 2015 ran a letter from a girl who shared that she has two moms, for example. The September 2016 Muse magazine (for the same age) included a column by a transgender teen boy about living with autism; in March 2017 it included a story about a teleporting girl with two moms.

Their online-only Cicada magazine goes even further, with numerous LGBTQAI+ stories from professional writers and teens, plus an online community for creative teens. Autumn McGarr, associate editor at Cricket Media, explained via e-mail, “Many (if not most) of our active community members identify as LGBTQAI+ in some way, and it’s really wonderful to see how warm and supportive they are to one another,” she added. “We provide diverse magazine content and moderation, sure, but the amazing thing about this community is that it became the welcoming and respectful space it is pretty organically. I think a lot of the credit for the inclusivity of the community goes to the members themselves.”

As a queer person myself, I want to publish the stories I needed as a teen.

She noted, “We want to be a safe and welcoming space and a place for teen creators to find inspiration and work on their craft.” That means offering “thought-provoking content by professional writers and artists,” along with “community support in hard times—both are necessary to the health and growth of creative folks!” On one of their message boards recently, for example, when a genderfluid teen said they felt depressed and suicidal, McGarr and community members offered to talk and shared numbers for crisis intervention hotlines.

McGarr said Cicada’s “devotion to inclusivity” began in 2013 with previous editor Anna Neher. They are continuing that mission, both with writers and through commissioned illustrations by LGBTQAI+ artists and artists of color.

“Nothing is more validating than seeing yourself in the media you consume, and this is especially true for young people just coming into their identities. As a queer person myself, I want to publish the stories I needed as a teen,” McGarr said.

Another large children’s magazine publisher, Highlights, began to include LGBTQ families in some of its magazines after a 2016 Internet campaign led by a two-mom couple. Images of two-mom or two-dad families (but not full-length stories about them) have appeared in five issues of their magazines since then, most recently the March 2018 High Five (ages two to six). A spokesperson told me last week, “We continue to be committed to publishing magazines that allow all children to see themselves in our pages, including children from families headed up by a grandparent or single parent, adoptive families, blended families, families with same-sex parents, multi-generational families, and multi-racial families.”

Cricket Media is actively seeking more LGBTQAI+ content through an “Over the Rainbow” call for submissions for Spider (ages six to nine) and Ladybug (ages three to six). They seek “warm family stories, an entire story without gender pronouns, children with different gender expressions, and gentle realistic or metaphorical coming out stories,” especially “matter-of-fact stories where being different isn’t the heart of the story, but part of the character’s identity.” Submissions, due April 15, 2018, will be used “to increase diversity throughout the year and in future issues,” Ware said. And McGarr said Cicada has an active call for stories about families (due April 13) and is “dying for more materials featuring LGBTQ parents, families of choice, and other diverse family structures.”

McGarr also has a bigger vision. “One of our big goals for the next couple of years is to build strong relationships with LGBTQ organizations to better serve our members and grow our community,” she said.

Find out more about all of Cricket Media’s offerings and their submission guidelines.

(Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.)