Equity & Inclusion Corner: It's All a Bunch of Queer Hocus Pocus! by Shanna Heath

The Equity and Inclusion Corner features quarterly posts written by members of the SCBWI-MI E&I Team and guests. Learn more about the E&I Team, upcoming initiatives, virtual Town Hall meetings, and how to become involved here: https://michigan.scbwi.org/2020/07/30/equity-and-inclusion-e-i-team/

Our fall 2021 post is by author Shanna Heath who also contributed to the Mitten Blog last month and led a community-wide Shop Talk: The Terrifying Terrific Toolkit: Scary Secrets for Writing and Illustrating Thrilling Kidlit. The recording is viewable for a brief time here: https://michigan.scbwi.org/events/kast-shop-talk-free-community-wide-webinar-with-shanna-heath/

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience, Shanna! Read her E&I Corner post below.

IT’S ALL A BUNCH OF QUEER HOCUS POCUS!

by Shanna Heath

It’s the spookiest month of the year, and if you’re into all things creepy like me, you finally feel at home in the world every October. That cozy sensation of belonging is fleeting, however, because I’m queer. But one Halloween in 2018 held a magical and queer children’s literature moment for me.

I was in Salem, MA on a sunny October day, browsing the stacks of Wicked Good Books on Essex Street. Three familiar faces caught my eye: Mary, Sarah, and Winnifred Sanderson. Hocus Pocus! Of course, I’m a fan. I scanned the cover and read, “and the All-New Sequel.” 

A sequel to Hocus Pocus? Okay. I’m here for it. The more witches in my life the better. I bought the book and settled in at an outdoor table at the Village Tavern. I cracked the book open (isn’t that the best feeling in the world?) and sipped from a pint of hard cider.

I expected the sequel to be straight. Most books are.

The very heterosexual Max and Allison in the 1993 film Hocus Pocus.

But the sequel to Hocus Pocus is gay. Not subtle gay. Gaaaaaaaay. The protagonist, Poppy Denison, is a lesbian and she’s in love. The daughter of Hocus Pocus couple Allison and Max, Poppy crushes hard on Isabella Richards. And Isabella is a black teen who returns Poppy’s affections! The story of their love is a major through line of the book. 

Illustrations of the three protagonists of the Hocus Pocus sequel. Poppy and Isabella are left and center.

I choked on my cider. “Excuse me, waitress? Have we been sucked into an alternate dimension?”

I was thirty-seven-years-old at that moment in time. A long way from childhood. Yet, when I read about Poppy and Isabella, my inner-child rejoiced. I was goosebumps-and-misty-eyes-level moved. Seeing myself reflected in the beloved Hocus Pocus universe shifted my heart one notch closer to self-acceptance. Toward self-love. Queer self-love.

Did you know that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth? The rate for trans kids is even more dire. Was I one of these kids? You betcha. If someone would have handed me the gay Hocus Pocus sequel, what may have been different for teenage me?

I would have seen myself mirrored in literature. “Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us,” wrote Rudine Sims Bishop. “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.”

Rudine Sims Bishop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc

The windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors that Bishop writes about are essential not just for LGBTQI+ kids. Poppy and Isabella’s love story is for straight kids, too. 

All kids need diverse stories. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” discussed her childhood in Nigeria, where she read books mainly about white children. She explains “[…] how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.” When we don’t have access to mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors, adults and children cannot get an accurate view of the world. “The consequence of the single story,” she continues, “is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

Visibility matters. To everyone.

This Halloween season, gift the gay Hocus Pocus sequel to the young adults in your lives. Read it together. Then, seek out more. Poppy and Isabella’s relationship is just one single story. The LGBTQI+ community is as diverse as any. More representation equals more stories, and more stories create compassionate kids.

“When there are enough books available that can act as both mirrors and windows for all our children,” Sims continues, “they will see that we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities, because together they are what make us all human.”

I’ll be doing a Poppy and Isabella re-read this October. Grab a cozy blanket and join me. 

Shanna Heath is an author and monster slayer who writes horror for all ages. Childhood can be terrifying. Shanna makes monsters, then shows kids and teens how to defeat them. Her favorite young horror read is Coraline by Neil Gaiman. She lives in Michigan with her patient wife and two spooky kids and is a proud member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and the Horror Writer’s Association (HWA). Shanna is represented by Paige Terlip at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. 

Connect with Shanna:

https://www.instagram.com/mother_marrow/

https://twitter.com/ShannaLHeath

Author website: https://shannaheath.com/ 

Author’s Note: This blog focuses on visibility in regard to LGBTQI+ representation. Diversity is an enormous universe. To find books that mirror the many varied ways in which humans live and love, check out We Need Diverse Books. 

Find more windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors into the LGBTQI+ universe here:

Stonewall Book Awards for Children’s and YA Literature

The Rainbow Book List

Lambda Literary