To mark Pride Month, which runs throughout June, we have picked out our favourite new children's books that celebrate the power of the LGBTQIA+ community and culture.

Picture Books for Pride Month

Inviting young readers to join a group of seven kids (one for each colour of the rainbow) as they countdown to their town’s Pride parade, Gareth Peter’s rhyming text makes One More Day Until Pride a read-aloud delight, while Max Rambaldi’s bright, bold illustrations are a veritable carnival of colour and character. After acknowledging that “there are times you may find that some people aren’t kind”, there’s a message around words of love having the power to “melt all that meanness away” before the parade takes to the streets. All of which means One More Day Until Pride adds up to a top tool for introducing young children to what Pride is, and to celebrating difference every day.

Grandad's Pride is a gorgeous picture book and the highly-anticipated sequel to Grandad's Camper, written and illustrated by Harry Woodgate. Grandad's Camper was inspired by their university dissertation, which revealed a lack of representation for older LGBT characters in children's books, and is a beautifully told story of love, and the importance of adventures and memories. 

Fiction for older children celebrating Pride Month

The Fights That Make Us is an exciting story about activism that will inspire all readers. When Jesse reads her aunt’s diary she discovers that they would have had a lot in common. Jesse has just come out as non-binary and is struggling with the perceptions of others when she discovers that her aunt Lisa, who was a teenager in the 1980s, fell in love with her best-friend and became involved in the fight against the introduction of draconian LGBTQ+ legislation that was being passed into law at the time. Another unputdownable read about LGBTQ+ history and standing up for what you believe in, from award-winning author Sarah Hagger-Holt, author of the moving, ground-breaking Nothing Ever Happens Here and Just Like Everyone Else  Sarah is is the author of two adult non-fiction LGBTQ+ parenting books, Pride and Joy and Living It Out and felt compelled to write her debut children's book, Nothing Ever Happens Here, to contrast with the often negative, sensationalist media coverage of trans people's lives. 

Children's Fact Books about the LGBTQIA+ Community

Celebratory in spirit and compellingly designed — with dazzling full-colour illustrations by Ruth Burrows on every page — Simon James Green’s A Year of Pride and Joy showcases the lives and passions of 52 LGBTQ+ individuals of our times. The overarching vibe here is joy, as set out by the author in an introduction that sees him define joy as something that runs deeper than happiness alone. Rather, joy is something that “gives us a sense of purpose and meaning, sparks pleasure and makes life worth living”.   

What is Pride Month?

Pride month is an annual event in June that celebrates the LGBTQ+ community around the world. Throughout the month there are concerts and parades to promote equality and acceptance - and to also join together in the joy of being proud to be who you are.

LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and is intended to emphasize a diversity of sexuality and gender identity-based cultures. It may be used to refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. To recognize this inclusion, a popular variant adds the letter Q for those who identify as queer or are questioning their sexual identity.

Those who add intersex people to LGBT groups use an extended initialism LGBTI. Some people combine the two acronyms and use the term LGBTIQ. Others use LGBT+ to encompass a spectrum of gender and sexuality. 

The Pride in London celebrations

Pride in London is part of the LGBT Pride Month celebrations, and takes place on 5th July 2025.

The event offers a platform to members of the LGBTQIA+ communities to showcase their creativity and identity through a programme of theatre, art, dance and other cultural activities.

The parade will include over 300 decorated floats, bands and performers with over 1.5 million visitors expected to enjoy and take part in the festivities.

The procession tracks the route of the first Gay Pride Rally held in 1972, beginning at Hyde Park Corner and snaking through the city to Whitehall Place.

And a few useful resources....

Pride in London includes a parade which starts at Hyde Park Corner and stage areas in several places in London with performers, speakers and food & drink stalls.

Find out more about the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the history of the Pride movement and gay people's rights at www.bbc.co.uk/newsround

The Proud Trust charity has resources and help for LGBT+ young people.

We take you on a journey here from picture books that reflect LGBTQIA+ family life to YA novels and non-fiction titles that explore sexuality, gender issues and romance.