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We're closing out Pride Month with book recommendations to take you through the entire year. Even better? These book recs tie in with the Progress Pride Flag. Created by Daniel Quasar in 2018, this flag design incorporates the trans flag, as well as the black and brown stripes adopted by the City of Philadelphia in 2017. We are always growing and moving forward—something that these books and the Progress Pride Flag reflect. Enjoy these book recs, and Happy Pride!

[Header created with photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels]

It’s time to celebrate confidence and fulfillment in oneself, equality for queer people, and visibility for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, asexuals, non-binary, pansexuals, intersex, and all other colors of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. We mean, that’s every day of the year for us, but June is Pride Month, so it’s the time to celebrate even harder.

This past fall, Quirk released author and illustrator M. L. Webb’s debut picture book The GayBCs, a joyful LGBTQ+ vocabulary book for kids of all ages, and it got us thinking about other picture books that help educate families about concepts of gender, identity, and inclusivity. Here’s some picture books that will serve as helpful starting points for discussions surrounding queer identity. Enjoy!

Prices subject to change.

Parades and other LGBTQ+ events may be canceled this year due to COVID-19, but that doesn't mean we can't celebrate Pride via our favorite medium—books. Check out these Pride e-book deals for some dicsounted celebrating!

It’s National Coming Out Day and we couldn’t be happier. As a publisher that prioritizes intersectionally feminist titles, we’re so pleased to have three queer titles to celebrate today. (Three of them!) For all the new parents, aunts, uncles, and proud friends, we’re recommending our newest picture book: The GayBCs by M.L. Webb, an inclusive book of ABCs meant to encourage conversation among children.

For our young adult readers – and YA fans of all ages – we have Princess and the Fangirl by Ashley Poston, a raucous adventure perfect for anyone who’s braved a con, stayed up all night working on cosplay, or written a piece of fanfic. It’s also super queer in a romcom way, so you don’t have to be a fangirl yourself to fangirl over Imogen and Jessica.

And for long time fans of Quirk Books, dig into our back catalogue with Born This Way by Paul Vitagliano, a book of over one hundred memories from LGBTQIA+ folks about their childhood. It’s a celebration of our true queer selves.

In celebration of this beautiful day, here are our (other) favorite queer-centric books, featuring some of our favorite young adult protagonists.

[Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash]

We don’t know about you, but for the last four seasons, Orange is the New Black has doubled as both excellent television and an extension of our TBR. Each episode is packed with literary references and character-specific reading material. Season five is out now and we're loving it. If you haven't watched the newest season yet (or even if you have), we’re reliving our favorite books of the series – revealing our secret wish to become best friends with the Orange is the New Black writers’ room.

“I wanna go oh-oh.”

And I did. Again and again. There I found freaks and deviants. Strung-out fiends in gobs of eye make-up and lip gloss. And I loved it, somehow. Every salacious second. From the “the back row-oh-oh” to the front, where the mix of sweat and mascara and spit from the live performers showered down like rain on Brad and Janet.

Luckily, I had an umbrella. Everyone did.