Find the grandmother who inspired the children’s book | Books

The hunt for two gay grandparents inspired a new children’s book after a chance encounter with a pantomime dame on. Blackpool Pride.

The women, whose names are not known, were present when the famous actress Mama G read in 2021, complaining to her about the lack of books for young people.

Mum G said she was reading books to children at Blackpool’s Winter Gardens when the mum asked if there was a granny she had sex with.

The question surprised him. “I was like, erm, no. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gay grandmother in the news, even as a supporting character,” she said. One of the women, who was very upset, told him that “it was difficult for him to stand in the books”.

The conversation led Mama G, whose real name is Robert Pearce, to write a children’s picture book where two older women are “front and center of change”.

The book, The World’s Proudest Bird, will be published on 1 July and Mama G wants to dedicate it to the two who inspired it – but first she has to track them down.

However, despite several weeks of complaints on social media, radio and newspapers, their identity remains a mystery. “I don’t have their names, I don’t know if they were from Blackpool – they could have been visiting,” said Mama G, likening the social media campaign to a search for a missing person.

The women are described as being around 5ft 6in with short hair, some with “salt and pepper curls”, and possibly wearing jeans and striped tops when they meet Mama G in 2021.

Despite nearly two decades of promoting diversity in family storytelling, Mama G said the conversation with the women was an “awakening”. “These two women are facing an uphill battle when it comes to representation because they are in the minority and it really hit home for me,” she said.

“The visibility of gay men is significantly reduced compared to gay men in the media.

A Scholarship in the US in 2022 found that despite the increase in LGBTQ+ books for children since 2000, the characters were not very popular and that some groups, such as homosexuals, were “absent”.

The Proudest Bird in the World tells the story of an ordinary white bird, Gilbert, who wants to explain who he really is and stumbles upon Pride, where he discovers that true colors don’t have to be outside.

The main characters are two grandmothers who teach Gilbert and his grandson what the colors of the rainbow flag mean to them.

Mother G, who is performing at the Edinburgh fringe this summer, said that the disparity of children’s books was not a problem, despite the efforts of several authors and small publishers.

He said publishers told him they “were not comfortable” taking on his first novel, Oh Yes I Am!, about a boy who lives in a gray world but learns to look good, because “it could be taken as an LGBT story”.

The book, published in 2023, and The Proudest Bird in the World, was taken by a small independent company.

Mother G said that mainstream publishers have shunned books that celebrate diversity for profit and that “there’s a lot of anti-community issues.

“I think that for different books to be published you have to look at smaller publishing houses because they are in a better position to take risks,” he said. “I’m excited to see what happens with this book – and I hope that if we get a grandmother who has sex with her, she’ll be proud to be a part of it.”