Did You Ever?

Overview

Did You Ever? is a 1971 Lollipop Power picture book by Paula Goldsmid, with Open Library records identifying Janice Schopler as illustrator and Jude Allen as lettering credit. Its collection significance is that it comes before explicit LGBTQ-family representation while helping explain the conditions that made such books possible. The local record describes a series of children imagining activities that break gender expectations: girls flying planes or fixing cars, boys cooking or showing tenderness. That makes the book a precursor object, not a gay-parent book. It belongs in the collection because Lollipop Power's early anti-stereotype publishing created a vocabulary for challenging inherited assumptions about gender, work, care, and childhood possibility. Later titles such as When Megan Went Away and Lots of Mommies make family structure more explicit; Did You Ever? shows the earlier method.^{[2][3][1][11]}

Before Explicit LGBTQ Family Representation

Did You Ever? does not depict gay or lesbian parents, and that restraint matters. Its role is to show the earlier Lollipop Power method: challenging gender rules before later books represented lesbian-parent households directly. The title belongs beside later LGBTQ-family books because it attacks the cultural assumptions that made those families seem unintelligible to many adults. In this record, precursor status is not a weakness. It helps visitors see how representation histories often begin with adjacent changes in language, role, and possibility.^[1][11][15]

Childhood As Social Formation

The book's repeated question form treats childhood as a place where social expectations are learned. Asking whether a child has ever imagined particular actions gives the text a direct pedagogical quality. It does not argue abstractly about gender equality; it invites children to picture doing things that may have been coded masculine or feminine. That makes the object useful for interpreting feminist children's publishing as social formation, not only as story or entertainment.^[2][6][7]

Occupational Imagination

The local record emphasizes girls and boys doing activities outside traditional gender expectations, while ERIC bibliographies place the title in nonsexist educational contexts. That pairing is important. The book's value is not only that it gives children varied occupations; it links imagination to a politics of possibility. Flying a plane, fixing a tire, cooking, or caring tenderly become small acts of representational expansion. The book asks children to see capacity before social permission closes it down.^[1][8][9]

Early Lollipop Power Method

Did You Ever? belongs to Lollipop Power's earliest cohort with books such as Martin's Father. The press's later reputation often rests on When Megan Went Away, but the earlier books show the collective's method taking shape: small-format children's books aimed at countering sex-stereotyped roles. That sequence matters for the collection because explicit family representation did not arrive from nowhere. It grew from a broader feminist publishing practice around childcare, classrooms, work, and social expectation.^[11][12][20]

Timeline

1. 1968Group 22 contextSara Evans connects Paula Goldsmid to the Chapel Hill feminist group that preceded Lollipop Power.^[17]
2. 1970Lollipop Power beginsLollipop Power emerged as a feminist children's publishing collective.^[11][12]
3. 1971Did You Ever?Open Library records Did You Ever? as a 1971 Lollipop Power title.^[2][3]
4. 1974-1977Educational circulationERIC bibliographies place the title in nonsexist and bias-free children's-book contexts.^[7][8]
5. 1979When Megan Went AwayLollipop Power later published an early lesbian-parent picture book.^[14][15]
6. 1983Lots of MommiesJane Severance's later Lollipop Power book continued the press's family-representation line.^[16]

Citation

Did You Ever?. Paula Goldsmid; illustrated by Janice Schopler. Lollipop Power, 1971. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-129.

Sources

Image from Wikimedia.

1. Mechanics Institute local catalog record · catalog
2. Open Library work record for Did You Ever? · library
3. Open Library edition record for Did You Ever? · library
4. Open Library author record for Paula Goldsmid · library
5. WorldCat record for Did You Ever? · library
6. ERIC bibliography including nonsexist children's books · education
7. ERIC bibliography of nonsexist books · education
8. ERIC bias-free books bibliography · education
9. ERIC sex-equity bibliography · education
10. NCJRS digitized bibliography with children's book listings · government
11. UNC finding aid for Lollipop Power records · archive
12. WUNC feature on Lollipop Power · news
13. Feminist Press history · publisher
14. Open Library record for When Megan Went Away · library
15. Mombian retrospective on When Megan Went Away · article
16. CiNii record for Lots of Mommies · library
17. Simon & Schuster record for Sara Evans, Tidal Wave · publisher
18. Oberlin College Archives, Paula Lipnick Goldsmid papers · archive
19. University Press of Mississippi scholarship on queer children's literature · scholarship
20. Open Library work record for Martin's Father · library
21. Open Library 1977 record for Martin's Father · library
22. Open Library author record for Margrit Eichler · library
23. WorldCat record for Martin's Father · library
24. WorldCat second-edition record for Martin's Father · library
25. HathiTrust record for Martin's Father · library
26. ERIC nonsexist booklist including Martin's Father · education
27. ERIC bibliography for one-parent family materials · education
28. ERIC family-life bibliography · education
29. ERIC bibliography with ethnic-minority subject classifications · education
30. Toronto City Council condolence record for Margrit Eichler · government
31. Google Books record for Nonsexist Research Methods · library