Gay Men and Picture Books

I have an idea that gay men write extraordinary villains; maybe it's about sympathy for the outsider.

The obvious example is Howard Ashman. Ashman's villains have so much charisma, they threaten to take over the stories they appear in. In "Little Shop of Horrors," the evil dentist, Orin Scrivello, literally stops the show. If you're choosing any role in "Little Mermaid," you of course choose to play Ursula. And Gaston, with his scheming and his lengthy (lengthy!) solo number, is quite a bit more compelling than Terrence Mann's Prince-Turned-Beast.

James Marshall wrote many immortal picture books, but there was only one time in his career (only one!) when he earned a Caldecott citation. This was also the only time he put an antihero front and center; I'm referring to his brilliant retelling of "Goldilocks." In Marshall's account, Goldilocks is obnoxious, self-centered, rapacious. A villager remarks that G looks like a "nice little girl," and a neighbor replies, "That's what you think." Marshall doesn't endorse Goldilocks's thoughtlessness -- and, yet, he resists the urge to judge his central character. In fact, he loves her; this is why the book is special.

John Steptoe's "Cinderella" is given a subtitle: "Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters." This is a case of a gay man trying to focus on Cinderella, but also (perhaps unintentionally) succumbing to an intense love for the wicked stepsister. In "Beautiful Daughters," the stepsister Manyara runs away with the story. She is so lifelike, she seems to be the subject of photographs (though we're in fact looking at sketched images). Manyara's greed makes her unappealing, but her ambition, her hunger for a new life, makes her understandable. Steptoe, a closeted (or lightly closeted) gay man, seems to prefer Manyara to his other characters.

Although Steptoe died of AIDS before he turned forty, he made a mark on the world of picture books. It seems to me that there is no site--not one site--on the Internet that tells an honest, detailed story about Steptoe's personal life.

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