The Not-So-Only Child

Overview

The Not-So-Only Child is a 2006 Nickname Press picture book by Heather Jopling, illustrated by Lauren Page Russell. Larissa, the child narrator, explains that being an only child does not mean being alone. Her family album includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends treated as kin, pets, mixed-race relatives, a grandmother with a female partner, a half-sister with two fathers, and a half-brother with two mothers. The book's importance is partly individual and partly relational. It belongs to the first Nickname Press group with Ryan's Mom Is Tall and Monicka's Papa Is Tall, and it turns family diversity into an extended kinship map rather than a single explanatory problem.^{[1][3][6][7][8]}

An Extended Family Album

The book uses the frame of a child's family album. That form matters because it allows many relationships to appear without ranking them as central or marginal. Larissa's narration moves through grandparents, parents, half-siblings, cousins, adults who function as kin, and pets. Same-sex-parent households are part of that larger structure, not a separate lesson inserted into it. The result is a family-diversity record built from accumulation: each page adds another relation and another way a child can understand belonging.^[1][6][7]

Many Routes To Kinship

The local catalog and public reviews identify a network that includes same-sex grandparents, children with two mothers, children with two fathers, mixed-race relatives, and family-making through assisted reproduction. This is why the item connects to donor-conception and surrogacy books as well as to same-sex-parent picture books. The book does not simply answer whether Larissa has siblings. It describes how kinship can be made through birth, partnership, friendship, donation, care, and repeated contact.^[1][6][2]

Nickname Press Context

Nickname Press's own history places The Not-So-Only Child with Ryan's Mom Is Tall and Monicka's Papa Is Tall in the press's first group of children's titles. That setting gives the book a more precise collection role. It was not an isolated many-family text; it was part of a small publisher's effort to put lesbian, gay, and nontraditional family forms into ordinary picture-book circulation. Reading the three titles together shows how a new press used repetition, simple language, and companion structures to reach young readers.^[2][3][5]

Classroom And Curriculum Use

Publisher materials for educators place the title within family and community learning, including extended families, separated families, interracial families, and LGBT-inclusive discussion. That educational framing is useful because the book's form already invites comparison across family structures. A classroom can ask how families differ without making one family the only topic under examination. In the collection, the item therefore helps show how early-childhood books were used not only for representation, but also for social-studies language around family and community.^[4][3][6]

Timeline

1. 2006PublicationPublic records and reviews place The Not-So-Only Child with Nickname Press in 2006.^[6][8][9]
2. September 2006Press launch groupNickname Press describes its first three titles as Ryan's Mom Is Tall, Monicka's Papa Is Tall, and The Not-So-Only Child.^[2][3]
3. March 2007Mombian reviewMombian reviewed Jopling's Nickname Press books together, preserving an early reception point for the group.^[7]
4. May 25, 2007CM Magazine reviewCM Magazine published Vivianne Fogarty's review, with bibliographic details and a detailed account of Larissa's family album.^[6]

Edition Notes

Known public records describe a 2006 Nickname Press picture book in hardcover and softcover forms.

Citation

The Not-So-Only Child. Heather Jopling; illustrated by Lauren Page Russell. Nickname Press, 2006. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-110.

Sources

Cover image from Nickname Press.

1. Local collection catalog record for The Not-So-Only Child · catalog
2. Nickname Press about page · publisher
3. Nickname Press book list · publisher
4. Nickname Press educators page · publisher_education
5. Nickname Press media page · publisher_media
6. CM Magazine review of The Not-So-Only-Child · review
7. Mombian review of Heather Jopling's Nickname Press books · review
8. Google Books record for The Not-So-Only Child · book_database
9. Open Library search record for The Not-So-Only Child · library_api
10. Google Books record for Recipes of How Babies are Made · book_database
11. Nickname Press cover image for The Not-So-Only Child · image