Emma and Meesha My Boy

Considine, Karen. 2005. Emma and Meesha My Boy: A Two Mom Story. Illustrated by Binny Hobbs. Two Mom Books: twomombooks.com. ISBN 1-4134-1600-4.

I chose this book when I read a reader review of it on Amazon.com. Reviewer Amy says that most of the GLBT picture books she sees "are fairly predictable and don't have much to offer outside of being a story about gay families." This reminded me of what some of our textbook authors have said about the need for stories that meet the needs of members of a parallel culture rather than just stories that explain the parallel culture to kids from the dominant one. As Amy points out, Emma and Meesha My Boy is rare because it treats the fact that Emma has two mothers as a detail of the story rather than the plot in itself.

Emma is a lively preschooler - a little too lively for Meesha the cat, since Mommy and Mama are always having to tell her not to pick him up, dress him in her clothes, or paint his fur. Eventually she realizes that there are lots of things she can do with Meesha that won't cause anyone to say "no" - like petting him and giving him food and water.

Occasionally the rhyming text doesn't scan, making it sound like the author was making an effort to make her sentence end in the right syllable regardless of what it actually said. But most of the time the text is appealing and bounces along between Emma's experiments and her moms' "Don't do that!"s.

The cartoon-style illustrations aren't anything spectacular, but they work - especially poor Meesha's facial expressions as Emma plays with him. There's only one false note - when Emma is trying to put shoes on Meesha and Mommy yells "Watch out for his claws!" with a big grin on her face. (It's strange especially since Meesha's expression is highly alarmed.)

On the book's website, www.twomombooks.com, Considine says, "The story is not about being different or unique, it makes no big deal of the lesbian moms. They just are everyday parents guiding her to be nice to the cat. In this fashion, it celebrates the lesbian mom family as it is, living ordinary lives."

While neither the writing nor the illustrations are what I would normally consider high-quality, the fact that this book tells a story that kids in two-mom families will be able to identify with makes it worthwhile to add to a collection. And since it's Considine's first book (she self-published it and is selling it through her website and on Amazon), there may be more and better books from her in the future.

On the back jacket, a review by Rosie O'Donnell says, "I read it - I loved it - Chelsea reads it every night."

Amazon.com. "Emma and Meesha My Boy." http://www.amazon.com/Emma-Meesha-My-Boy-Story/dp/1413416004/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5676480-3776938?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186080616&sr=8-1.

Two Mom Books. "About the Author." http://www.twomombooks.com/author.html.