Middle Grades Books with LGBTQ+ Characters

I’m looking for middle grades books that include LGBTQ+ characters in a positive but normal, everyday way. What do you recommend?

There are lots of picture books and lots of young adult books that focus on LGBTQ+ characters, but — though this is starting to change — pickings are slimmer on the middle grades shelves.

You’ll find several books for this age range featuring kids with nontraditional families — The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher, The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister, The Lotterys Plus One, and My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer are good examples of this slice of the genre.

Middle grades books aren’t usually focused on romance, but LGBTQ+ characters are starting to pop up as protagonists, too. One of my favorites is Tim Federle’s Better Nate Than Ever, about a theater kid who hops the bus to New York City to try out for E.T. The Musical. Raina Telgemeier’s Drama also focuses on kids obsessed with theater. Jacqueline Wilson’s Kiss is about a girl whose kindergarten sweetheart and best friend seems to be growing away from her, and she’s trying to understand why. In all three books, major male characters are beginning to realize that they’re noticing other boys and wondering why, but that’s just one piece of their growing-up story, not the main plot.

There are also a few good books about trans kids. Gracefully Grayson and George are both about girls who are trying to navigate the world inside biologically male bodies. Wandering Son focuses on 5th grade best friends Shuichi and Yoshino: Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy, and Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl. All three are sensitive, matter-of-fact stories about what it’s like to be a trans kid.

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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