Slashy kids books

Does anyone have any thoughts on slashy children's literature? Either picture books or novels.

When I read Frog and Toad as a young kid, it seemed quite plain to me that Frog and Toad were lovers. I didn't go into any steamier imaginings at that stage, it was simply a fact of their relationship.

I had tried to convince my friend for ages that Smeagol and Deagol in Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King were lovers and not cousins or close relations. She, being raised on J.r.r. tolkien's fictional lands, refused to believe it.

The new children's book And Tango Makes Three is about two male penguins in the Central Park Zoo in NYC that adopt an abandoned egg and raise it as their own. It's actually receiving a lot of book challenges because of this.

And Tango Makes Three sounds adorable! The controversy is remarkable (though thoroughly unsurprising).

I wonder how many parents who would want such a book banned have unwittingly allowed their kids to read slashy books (ie ones with a subtextual homosexuality rather than overt). Lots I hope! :)

This isn't a book thing, so it probably doesn't really qualify, but when I was a child, they ran an old cartoon series on a local (NYC) station weekday afternoons. It was called The Mighty Heroes. The premise was that a team of five dweebish characters who had these esoteric powers solved crimes. One of the superheroes was a blond, dumb jock type named Strongman who had a "special" relationship with this infant character, Diaperman. He referred to him as "Lil Buddy," all the time. And, strangely, because this was long before I completely understood sex, I had a special interest in their relationship. I was turned on by it - in a primitive, naive way. Only later did I recognise this as the formative spark for my interest in slash.

As an interesting aside, Ralph Bakshi was one of the illustrators, so maybe he planted subliminal sexual messages in there somewhere.

The Winter prince by Elizabeth wein has very slashy undertones, and I belive I've encountered fanfics about that on skyehawke

Smeagol and Deagol sounded oddly intimate to me, too.

-Lisa Shapter

In the Victorian-influenced era that Tolkien wrote, there seems to be a lot of male friendships that are very intimate. The Victorian boarding school is cliche in matters of slash, so I wonder if that plays into the matter.