Column: San Diego author’s new LGBTQ+ book for children is a product of love and experience

Nancy Lapointe’s debut children’s book, “Sparky’s Big News,” is very short and very sweet. But when she started writing it, the former teacher and current Escondido resident had big goals for her little story. She still does.

She wanted this story about a boy growing up gay to reflect the positive experiences of her son, Jett. She wanted it to honor the memory of her beloved brother Bobby, a museum curator who died of AIDS in 1995. She wanted to show kids that it is OK to be who you are, and she wanted to show parents that a child’s sexual orientation isn’t something to be ashamed of.

But mostly, she wanted to write a book that would make people smile. With Lapointe’s accessible, child-friendly writing and Len Hernandez’s bold, cheery illustrations, “Sparky’s Big News” tells the upbeat story of a happy gay boy growing up to be a happy gay man. And what makes “Sparky’s Big News” so simple is also what makes it so surprising.

“One of the things that I saw when I was doing my research is that a lot of what is written about gay children is about being bullied or about being rejected when they come out. With Jett and with my brother, everyone was very supportive,” Lapointe said. “I cringe when I hear someone saying, ‘Oh, I accept my gay son. I accept my gay daughter.’ And I always think, ‘Why just accept them? Why not celebrate them?’

“And that was my intent for the book, that it would be celebratory, happy and joyous.”

For Lapointe, writing “Sparky’s Big News” was both the start of a new life chapter and the summing up of an old one. Before retiring to Escondido in 2012, Lapointe spent 27 years teaching high-school and college English in and around Corpus Christi, Texas. She was also a single parent to Jett and his three older sisters. Lapointe had always wanted to combine her love of writing and literature with what she learned from watching Jett come out on his own time and on his own terms. And when the COVID-19 pandemic had her sticking close to home, she decided it was time to tell Sparky’s story.

“I had it in my head for many years that I was going to do this book, and I thought, ‘I’ve got time, and I don’t have anything to break my focus. I am going to go out and get this published,” Lapointe said. “And then I started writing.”

The book follows Sparky as he grows from being a boy who would rather read than play with trucks into a young man with a flair for design, a high-school student who wears a sparkly tux to the prom, and finally, into a college student who is dating a nurse named Daniel.

Each time Sparky does something that doesn’t match the typical gender stereotypes, someone — his sister, his grandfather, even Sparky himself — wonders if this means Sparky is gay.

And each time someone wonders what it means when Sparky wants to play with dolls, dress up as a lady pirate or paint action figures instead of playing soccer, Sparky’s mother finds a new way of saying that Sparky is fine just the way he is.

Label or no label.

When his sister asks if Sparky is gay like his uncles, his mother says, “Maybe. Maybe not. He will figure it out some day, and he will probably tell us.”

When Sparky’s grandfather asks him if his artful arrangement of the Thanksgiving relish tray means he’s gay, Sparky says, “I’m gay when I say I’m gay. You like to grow flowers, Grandpa. Are you gay?”

And when Sparky tells his mother that he’s dating Daniel and that yes, he’s gay, she says, “Let’s go out for a nice dinner and celebrate!”

As a stressed, single working mother of four children, Lapointe knows she wasn’t always as unflappable as the mom in her book. But almost everything that happens in “Sparky’s Big News” happened in real life, including the celebratory ending.

Like Sparky’s mom, Lapointe believes in giving all children the room to play the way they want to play, express themselves in ways that make them happy, and love whoever they want to love.

There are a lot of kids like Sparky out there, and all of them deserve a story they can smile about.

“My thing with Jett always was, ‘He’s gay when he says he’s gay,’” Lapointe says of Jett, who lives in Tampa with his husband. “The Thanksgiving tray, the tuxedo at the dance, that was Jett being Jett. He was always such a fabulous person, and I wouldn’t want to change a thing about him.

“I think there is a danger in saying, ‘You’re gay because you don’t like playing with trucks and you like to make relish trays.’ That means someone else is making that proclamation for you, instead of you being the one who is figuring it out for yourself. You are the person who has that right. I feel very strongly about that.”