100 Books Like Max

My son is donor conceived, and I’m a solo parent by design, so how he was made is something we’ve talked about since he was tiny. (Although the conversation was rather one-sided for a number of years!)

When I discovered this book it quickly became a favourite as it’s so inclusive! The way it’s presented transcends gender and family set up, meaning you can use it to discuss any or all of the ways a baby can be made. Understanding how babies come into the world and grow helps children to realise the importance of their own bodies. 

I love how you casually get introduced to the main character’s brother’s boyfriend, Peleke, while the children are on a scavenger hunt for natural things in all the colors of the rainbow. If I were a teacher and had to grade this, I would give it an A+++. The publisher, Flamingo Rampant Press, states, “we don’t publish books that have primary narratives about bullying, ostracization, harassment or violence. If your book is about a kid who is made to feel like their identity or family is a problem, that’s not going to be a book for us.” That is one terrific reason for me to love this book.

This book was published by Lollipop Power Press, an iconic feminist publishing house formed in 1969. I have a soft spot for old-school one-color illustrations (these ones are forest green against an off-white background). Emily is raised in an intentional community of four women. One mom is studying to be an electrician. Another is a healer. Vicki drives a school bus. Annie Jo is a carpenter who loves to cook. No one at school believes that Emily has so many mothers, but that all changes when she falls on the playground and her amazing parents get called into school. Suddenly it's très cool to have so many moms. I want this book to have a revival. It’s so good.

In 1992, the legendary Leslea came to my college and spoke in a splendid historical chapel about her work. I’ve never belonged to a house of worship. I am a children’s book author who writes about Queer people, so I kinda think this makes Lesléa Newman my minister. In this wonderful book, Mama Rose makes the sign “Gay Mechanic Healing the Planet.” Mama Grace’s sign reads “Gay Nurse Healing the Earth” and she has a tambourine in her backpack. It makes perfect sense that Andrea the mail carrier, the music teacher with the mustache, and nurse Richard are all in attendance at Gay Pride. They chant “2-4-6-8. Being gay is really great” at the parade while all the sidewalk people cheer.

Barbara Browning is a professor of dance, and a capoeirista. She learnt capoeira in New York and took classes with two of the first Brazilians to teach there in the 1970s. 

This is a book about Samba (the Brazilian national dance) with one long chapter about capoeira. As a female dancer Browning came to capoeira, when women learners were rare in Brazil and in the USA, with a relevant skill.

Many women capoeira learners came from dance backgrounds whereas most male learners in the UK and USA find the dance side harder than the more martial element. Browning sets capoeira into its original Brazilian embodiment and against a North American embodiment.

I am sure many of you already know this visionary philosopher from his ground-breaking The Hero With a Thousand Faces. You may not be aware that Campbell was married to Jean Erdman, one of Martha Graham’s principal dancers in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Campbell’s initiations to modern dance came at Sarah Lawrence College when witnessing Erdman as Graham’s student; and then at Bennington, where Erdman performed with Graham’s company. His own learned background in the archetypal ethos of C.G. Jung made Campbell a prime candidate for Graham’s deeply-digging, Nietzschean/ecstatic archaic/abstract movement vocabulary. The choreographer and the professor spoke the same kinaesthetic language, Erdman remembered. There were many late nights when “Martha would call Joe on the phone” with some arcane question about her mythographic pieces in progress – Night Journey and Errand into the Maze. Many of Campbell’s essays in this book were first published in Dance Observer… show more.

This is a young adult romance novel featuring Radha Chopra, a world-renowned Kathak dancer, who gives up her love of dance when a family betrayal comes to light. Radha is instantly a protagonist to root for, a strong, independent, and fierce Indian woman that we so rarely see in contemporary Western media. Nisha Sharma champions such genuine desi representation in this story, and it is absolutely a must-read for all—but especially for passionate and creative Indian American teenagers. 

Gale Galligan is another artist I’ve followed for a while now and it seems like everything they make just overflows with creativity and charm.

I love how Freestyle combines both dance and yo-yoing, two things I’d never think to put together, and makes it work so seamlessly. The book is just pure, vibrant, fun, and even as an adult I found myself going back and admiring the artwork and movement Gale portrays on every page. This is the kind of book that will have readers coming back again and again just to get wrapped up in its beautiful, vivid world. 

I selected this book because it finally offered me some answers to questions I’d asked myself all my life: Why am I so driven to dance? Why does dancing make me feel so euphoric? McNeill found himself asking this last question when forced to go through endless military close-order drill (a sort of dance!) as a young draftee. Whence these surprisingly positive effects of “keeping together in time”? Over the course of his later life as a historian, he tracked down a fascinating array of anecdotal and cognitive answers.  The relation of this phenomenon to unique details of how the human brain is put together was then further addressed by Oliver Sacks toward the end of his book Musicophilia, where I first learned of McNeill.

This is my favorite The Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling! Heather Dixon includes all twelve princesses, named after various plants, and gives them distinct enough personalities that not only can you keep them straight, you care about each one. This story follows Azalea, the eldest of the twelve sisters, and the mysterious Keeper, who invites the princesses to dance every night in his silver forest. But the Keeper likes to keep things, and can Azalea bear to pay the cost? Eerie and gorgeous, romantic and masterful!