The King and the King

The other night at bedtime BioMom and I read a couple of books in a series to the FYO. The books were:

King & King by Linda de Haan & Stern Nijland, and their second book, King & King & Family.

They are lovely books. Basically, the story starts with a young prince who is to get married and take over the thrown from his exhausted Queen-Mum who is dreaming of retirement. In the search for the perfect future-queen, the prince's heart pitter-pats for one candidate's brother. And so the story goes.

What is nice about it is that a) the story is more like a fairy tale than other books with the gay-parent theme and b) it is just simply, sweet.

The famous Heather Has Two Mommies is written for an older kid, with small print and more words on the page. It covers the whole "there are lots of different families" angle. Other books for kids with the theme of gay parents approach what the author expects will be negative attitudes from the gay-parented kid's schoolmates. Picture a scene at school with a bunch of children in a room having a conversation about their families:

Where's your daddy?

or

That's not a family!

BioMom and I had not yet introduced this sort of literature to the FYO because it all seemed to assume some negativity -- before the fact. So we basically avoided it all until, we found King & King.

Anyway, we read the stories to the FYO and all was good. Off to bed.

Next night: BioMom revisits the stories. BioMom reported seeing the lightbulb over her head afterwards:

That just can't be!

What can't be?

The prince can't marry the prince. He has to marry the princess!

Again, the protests from BioMom:

But our friends MRM1 and MRM2 are married? And what about me and [blog author's first name]?

But [blog author's first name] is a boy!

No she isn't.

So, she struggles.