Category Archives: Happy Holigays

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day 2026!

Happy National Girls and Women in Sports Day! In celebration, here are a whole bunch of books that center queer girls and women in sports! (For even more recs, check out these past posts!)

This post is sponsored in honor of the audiobook release of Out of Our League, out now from Recorded Books!

Buy it: Libro.fm | Audible | Apple

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Happy Black History Month 2026!

It’s Black History Month, and we’re celebrating as we do with books by Black authors (almost entirely) starring Black characters! For even more titles, check out past years’ posts.

Picture Books

Dancing with Water by Gwendolyn Wallace and Tonya Engel

An intergenerational story about a nonbinary child who learns the tradition of well digging in this picture book about community, hope, and protecting the Earth’s water.

As soon as Kit’s old enough to ride in Grandpa’s truck, they begin joining him to dig wells for their community. Grandpa is magic. He can feel the weather in his bones, and he’s able to dance with water. With just a tree branch in his hand, Grandpa sways and spins over the land until he finds a spot to dig a hole into the waiting earth. When the water springs up, Grandpa and Kit jump for joy.

As new hotels and factories pop up across town, clean water becomes harder to find. Sometimes, no water flows at all. Kit is sad for Grandpa—and for Earth. But one day, Grandpa senses that Kit is ready to dance with water too. Grandpa reminds Kit that the energy and strength of their people flows through the water. As they wait and watch for fresh, clear water to flow up from the ground again, Kit recognizes the power shared between themself and Earth.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy 250th Birthday, Jane Austen!

RIP, Jane – you would’ve really loved how much queer literature is explicitly gaying up your work.

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For generally Austen-inspired work, check out:

I Shall Never Fall in Love by Hari Conner

George has major problems: They’ve just inherited the failing family estate, and the feelings for their best friend, Eleanor, have become more complicated than ever. Not to mention, if anyone found out they were secretly dressing in men’s clothes, George is sure it would be ruination for the family name.

Eleanor has always wanted to do everything “right,” including falling in love—but she’s never met a boy she was interested in. She’d much rather spend time with her best friend, George, and beloved cousin Charlotte. However, when a new suitor comes to town, she finds her closest friendships threatened, forcing her to rethink what “right” means and confront feelings she never knew she had.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy Native American Heritage Month 2025!

Happy Native American Heritage and Indigenous History Month! We’re celebrating, as we do, with books by Indigenous authors, starring Indigenous characters. (Note: Despite the title of the post, these books include indigenous characters from all over.) While the usual affiliate links are included, you’re strongly encouraged to order from the Native-owned Birchbark Books where available!

Picture Books

Phoenix Ani’ Gichichi-I’ / Phoenix Gets Greater by Marty Wilson-Trudeau with  Phoenix Wilson (text) and Megan Kyak-Monteith (illustration), translated by Kelvin Morrison

Phoenix loves to play with dolls and marvel at pretty fabrics. Most of all, he loves to dance―ballet, Pow Wow dancing, or just swirling and twirling around his house. Sometimes Phoenix gets picked on and he struggles with feeling different, but his mom and brother are proud of him. With their help, Phoenix learns about Two Spirit/Niizh Manidoowag people in Anishinaabe culture and just how special he is.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | Birchbark Books

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Happy (Upcoming) Intersex Awareness Day 2025!

Intersex Awareness Day is October 26th, and we’re celebrating as we do with books that have intersex rep! All of these titles either have intersex MCs, or have intersex secondary characters but are also by intersex authors. 

Middle Grade Fiction

Cattywampus by Ash Van Otterloo

In the town of Howler’s Hollow, conjuring magic is strictly off-limits. Only nothing makes Delpha McGill’s skin crawl more than rules. So when she finds her family’s secret book of hexes, she’s itching to use it to banish her mama’s money troubles. She just has to keep it quieter than a church mouse — not exactly Delpha’s specialty.

Trouble is, Katybird Hearn is hankering to get her hands on the spell book, too. The daughter of a rival witching family, Katy has reasons of her own for wanting to learn forbidden magic, and she’s not going to let an age-old feud or Delpha’s contrary ways stop her. But their quarrel accidentally unleashes a hex so heinous it resurrects a graveyard full of angry Hearn and McGill ancestors bent on total destruction. If Delpha and Katy want to reverse the spell in time to save everyone in the Hollow from rampaging zombies, they’ll need to mend fences and work together.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N

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Happy LGBTQ History Month 2025!

Happy LGBT History Month! We are, of course, celebrating as we celebrate everything over here – with books! Specifically, with both fiction and nonfiction that pay tribute to LGBT history.

Fiction

Middle Grade

Alice Austen Lived Here by Alex Gino

Sam is very in touch with their own queer identity. They’re nonbinary, and their best friend, TJ, is nonbinary as well. Sam’s family is very cool with it… as long as Sam remembers that nonbinary kids are also required to clean their rooms, do their homework, and try not to antagonize their teachers too much.

The teacher-respect thing is hard when it comes to Sam’s history class, because their teacher seems to believe that only Dead Straight Cis White Men are responsible for history. When Sam’s home borough of Staten Island opens up a contest for a new statue, Sam finds the perfect non-DSCWM subject: photographer Alice Austen, whose house has been turned into a museum, and who lived with a female partner for decades.

Soon, Sam’s project isn’t just about winning the contest. It’s about discovering a rich queer history that Sam’s a part of — a queer history that no longer needs to be quiet, as long as there are kids like Sam and TJ to stand up for it.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy Bi Visibility Day 2025!

It’s Bi Visibility Day, and we’re celebrating as we do with books starring bi main characters! For even more recs, check out past years’ posts!

Young Adult

Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin

All’s fair in love and Color War.

Juliette doesn’t hate Priya Pendley.

At least, not in the way teen movies say she should hate the hot popular girl. They don’t do cat fights, love triangles, or betrayal. To survive their intertwined small town lives, they’ve agreed to a truce. They complete group projects without fighting, never gossip to mutual friends, and stand on opposite sides of photos so it’s easy to crop each other out.

Priya seems to have everything during the school year—social media stardom, the handsome track captain boyfriend, and millions of adoring fans—and Juliette is at peace with that. Because Juliette has the summer, and the one place she never feels like “too much”: Fogridge Sleepaway Camp.

But her hopes for a few Priya-free weeks are shattered when her rival shows up at Fogridge on move-in day… as her cabinmate, no less. Juliette is determined to enjoy her final summer, even if it means (gag) tolerating her childhood rival, but everything that can go wrong, does.

If Juliette can’t find something to like about her situation—and about Priya—she risks hating the only home she’s ever had, right before she says goodbye to it forever.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy Latine Heritage Month 2025!

Happy Latine Heritage Month! We’re celebrating as we do with books by Latine authors, mostly starring Latine main characters, and if you want even more recs, check out past years’ posts!

Middle Grade

It’s All or Nothing, Vale by Andrea Beatriz Arango

All these months of staring at the wall?
All these months of feeling weak?
It’s ending—
I’m going back to fencing.
And then it’ll be
like nothing ever happened.

No one knows hard work and dedication like Valentina Camacho. And Vale’s thing is fencing. She’s the top athlete at her fencing gym. Or she was . . . until the accident.

After months away, Vale is finally cleared to fence again, but it’s much harder than before. Her body doesn’t move the way it used to, and worst of all is the new number one: Myrka. When she sweeps Vale aside with her perfect form and easy smile, Vale just can’t accept that. But the harder Vale fights to catch up, the more she realizes her injury isn’t the only thing holding her back. If she can’t leave her accident in the past, then what does she have to look forward to?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy National Translation Month 2025!

Join us in celebrating National Translation Month with these queer novels translated into English, organized by language of origin! Looking for translations of English-language works to other languages? Click here for MG/YA and here for Adult fiction.

Afrikaans

Fathers and Fugitives by S.J. Naudé, translated by Michiel Heyns

Daniel is a worldly and urbane journalist living in London. His relationships appear to be sexually fulfilling but sentimentally meager. A young gay man with no relationships outside of sexual ones, he can seem at once callow and, at times, cold to the point of cruel with his lovers. Emotionally distant from his elderly, senile father, Daniel nonetheless returns to South Africa to care for him during his final months. Following his father’s death, Daniel learns of an unusual clause in the old man’s will: he will only inherit his half of his father’s considerable estate once he has spent time with Theon, a cousin whom he hasn’t seen since they were boys, who lives on the old family farm in the Free State. Once there, Daniel discovers that the young son of the woman Theon lives with is seriously ill. With the conditions bearing on Daniel’s inheritance shifting in real time, Theon and Daniel travel with the boy to Japan for an experimental cure and a voyage that will change their lives forever.

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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Happy International Nonbinary Day 2025!

Happy International Nonbinary Day! We’re celebrating as we do with great books starring nonbinary protagonists or love interests. For even more recs, check out past years’ posts!

Children’s

Robin’s Worlds by Rainie Oet (text) and Mathias Ball (illustration)

A nonbinary child is whisked off on a spellbinding adventure for their birthday in this dazzling tale of friendship, community, and self-love.

It’s Robin’s eighth birthday and it seems like everyone has forgotten. But things take a sudden turn when the Cat-Headed Wanderer shows up and sweeps Robin away to a magical party in a fantastical treehouse. It’s a joyful celebration full of song, dance, and newfound friends, but Robin soon realizes there’s another reason they’ve been brought there. To uncover that reason, all Robin needs to do is walk through the half-open door in the back—but what lies beyond?

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

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