Is Your Family Like Mine?

Overview

Is Your Family Like Mine? is a picture book by Lois Abramchik, published by Open Heart Open Mind in a 1996 paperback edition. Public records identify Alaiyo Bradshaw as illustrator and describe the book as a story about Armetha, a young child who asks classmates about their families. The local record and later commentary agree on the central movement: Armetha has two mothers, notices questions about not having a father at home, and learns about several family forms before her mothers explain the difference between a parent who helps create a child and parents who raise one. Jennifer Esposito's scholarly article places the book among a small group of lesbian-mother picture books and reads it critically, noting both its representational value and its reliance on the child's question about a missing father.^{[2][4][6][7][1]}

A Child's Family Survey

The book uses a simple narrative structure: Armetha asks other children who belongs to their families. That question lets the text name several household forms, including two mothers, mother-and-father households, single-parent families, stepfamilies, and foster families. The structure gives young readers a repeated pattern for comparison. Its central claim is that families vary, while care and love give them a shared language.^[4][6][1]

Explaining A Creating Father

The local record and later scholarship both emphasize the book's explanation of a father who helped create the child but does not raise her. This places Is Your Family Like Mine? beside donor-origin books, even though the plot is framed through school friendship rather than medical process. The book is careful to separate biological origin from daily parenting, giving Armetha two mothers who raise her and a male contributor who helped make her birth possible.^[1][7][6]

A Critical Reading Of Difference

Esposito's article is useful because it does not simply celebrate the book. It argues that some lesbian-mother picture books explain difference by centering the absence of a father, which can leave the mother-father family as the unspoken norm. That critique makes the item richer for researchers. The book both expands representation and shows the limits of an early explanatory mode that had to answer questions shaped by heteronormative expectations.^[7]

Date And Credit Instability

The title's public trail is not perfectly stable. Goodreads and Open Library point to a 1993 first-publication path, while AbeBooks and the local catalog use the 1996 edition record. Other public snippets add editor and illustrator details that should be confirmed against the held copy. This instability is part of the record's value. It shows how early LGBTQ-family picture books can survive as scattered catalog evidence, classroom memory, and scholarship rather than as a clean trade-publishing file.^[4][5][2][8]

Timeline

1. 1993First-publication trailGoodreads and Open Library point to a 1993 first-publication path for the title.^[4][5]
2. 1996Paperback editionAbeBooks and the local catalog identify a 1996 Open Heart Open Mind paperback edition.^[2][1]
3. 2009Scholarly analysisJennifer Esposito discussed the book in an article on lesbian-mother representation in picture books.^[7]
4. 2019Later critical noteRaise Them Righteous revisited the title as part of a broader project on LGBTQ children's literature.^[6]

Early Two-Mother Picture-Book Context

A set of records where children ask how their families are understood by others.

Citation

Is Your Family Like Mine?. Lois Abramchik; illustrated by Alaiyo Bradshaw. Open Heart Open Mind, 1996. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-061.

Sources

Cover image from Open Library.

1. Local collection catalog record for Is Your Family Like Mine? · catalog
2. AbeBooks record for Is Your Family Like Mine? · bookseller
3. eBay product record for Is Your Family Like Mine? · bookseller
4. Goodreads record for Is Your Family Like Mine? · reader_catalog
5. Open Library search record for Is Your Family Like Mine? · library
6. Raise Them Righteous note on Is Your Family Like Mine? · scholarship_blog
7. Jennifer Esposito article on lesbian-mother picture books · scholarship
8. Checklist of Children's Books Featuring LGBTQ Family Members · bibliography