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Mechanics' Institute

Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection

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Cover of In Our Mothers' House.

Cover image from Penguin Random House.

Image source

In Our Mothers' House

Creator

Patricia Polacco

Date

Published 2009

Format

Book

A two-mother family picture book with adoption, multiracial family, access-case, and edition-afterlife contexts.

Two mothersAdoptionMultiracial familyLibrary accessPatricia Polacco
Contact About AccessBack to catalog

Overview

In Our Mothers' House is Patricia Polacco’s 2009 picture book about Meema, Marmee, and the three children they adopt and raise in their Berkeley home. The local catalog describes a life-course narrative: children arrive, grow up, marry, return with families of their own, and remember the house after their mothers' deaths. Public sources add review, publisher, ALA Rainbow Book List, and legal-access context. The book is one of the collection’s strongest standalone records because it combines mainstream trade publication, a prominent author-illustrator, explicit two-mother family representation, adoption and multiracial family themes, critical reception, and a documented Davis School District access dispute. Its later Kindness Edition gives the title an additional afterlife for classrooms and families.[2][3][6][7]

House As Family Archive

The local description makes the house itself a structure for memory. Meema and Marmee raise three adopted children there; the children grow up, marry, return, and eventually remember the mothers through the house and its rituals. That life-course shape is broader than many picture books about family recognition. It lets the two-mother household become an intergenerational family archive, with food, neighbors, weddings, grandchildren, grief, and return woven together. The collection can therefore show not only that the family exists, but how the book imagines continuity over time.[1][2]

Adoption And Multiracial Family

The story’s adopted children give the book a second major frame. The local record describes children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds arriving into Meema and Marmee's home, and library records preserve subject language around families, mothers, homosexuality, and juvenile fiction. This matters because the book does not isolate two-mother identity from other family forms. It presents adoption, race, sibling life, and household belonging together, making it a useful comparison to adoption-origin titles and many-family books across the collection.[1][4][3]

Neighborhood Conflict

The book includes an intolerant neighbor, a detail that both local and review sources treat as important. Kirkus offers a mixed reading of the book, while the local catalog emphasizes the family's loving response and the wider support around them. A careful record should preserve that tension. The scene is not the whole story, but it shows how public hostility enters an otherwise sustaining domestic world. The strongest interpretation is not that the book is conflict-driven, but that it places conflict inside a long narrative of family continuity.[1][5]

Reception And Access

The public record gives In Our Mothers' House a substantial access history. ALA Rainbow Project recognized the title, while ACLU and Clearinghouse records document the Davis School District case over restricted access and later return to shelves. This gives the item a strong institutional layer. It shows how an explicit two-mother family book by a major picture-book creator could be recommended by professional lists and still become the subject of school-library restriction and legal challenge in a district setting.[6][7][8][10]

Timeline

  1. 2009Review recordKirkus reviews In Our Mothers' House.[5]
  2. 2009Hardcover publicationPhilomel publishes the original hardcover.[2][3]
  3. 2010Rainbow ProjectALA includes the book in the Rainbow Project Book List.[6]
  4. 2012Davis restrictionCase records describe restricted access in Davis School District.[7][8]
  5. 2012Federal case filedA.W. and C.W. v. Davis School District is filed.[8]
  6. 2013Return to shelvesACLU reports an agreement returning the book to school library shelves.[7]
  7. 2013Case closedThe Clearinghouse record marks the case closed.[8]
  8. 2025Kindness EditionPenguin Random House records a later paperback edition with discussion questions.[2]

Edition And Access Trail

The title moves from hardcover publication through school-access dispute and later edition afterlife.

2009

Philomel hardcover

Original edition held in the collection.

2012-2013

Davis School District case

Restricted access and return-to-shelves context.

2025

Kindness Edition

Later paperback with discussion materials.

Explore Connections

Browse direct links, shared themes, and nearby publication dates.

Linked records

Challenge lineage

Heather Has Two Mommies

Both explicit two-mother titles connect family representation to access and challenge histories.

References [13][7]

Wedding cluster

Mom and Mum Are Getting Married

Both titles picture two-mother families in long-term domestic and ceremonial settings.

References [14][2]

Newman wedding title

Donovan's Big Day

Both books belong to the 2009-2011 period when two-mother family books increasingly pictured ordinary rituals.

References [15][2]

Early many-family title

Families

Families provides an earlier coded or many-family comparison to Polacco's explicit two-mother household.

References [17][2]

Shared themes

Adoption

The White Swan Express

A China-adoption picture book with multiple adopting families, including a lesbian couple, and a later Singapore library-access history.

Two mothers

Families, a Coloring Book

A Michael Willhoite coloring book that presents many family structures, including two mothers and two fathers.

Two mothers

All Families Are Special

A classroom many-family picture book that includes a child with two mothers among several family forms.

Two mothers

While You Were Sleeping

A signed picture book about two women becoming adoptive mothers to a newborn child.

Nearby dates

Published 2009

And Baby Makes 4

A photographic picture book about a child with two mothers becoming an older sibling after donor insemination.

Published 2009

Arwen and Her Daddies

A Dutch-to-English two-father adoption picture-book trail shaped by parent publishing and community bibliography.

2009

Daddy, Papa, and Me

A board book placing a toddler and two fathers inside everyday care.

Published 2009

Girls Are Not Chicks Coloring Book

A feminist Reach And Teach / PM Press coloring book about gender stereotypes and child-facing media.

Citation

In Our Mothers' House. Patricia Polacco. Philomel Books, 2009. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-137.

Showing Plain text citation format.

Sources

Cover image from Penguin Random House.

  1. Local collection catalog record for In Our Mothers' House · catalog
  2. Penguin Random House record for In Our Mothers' House · publisher
  3. Open Library ISBN record for In Our Mothers' House · library
  4. Marmot library record for In Our Mothers' House · library
  5. Kirkus review of In Our Mothers' House · review
  6. ALA 2010 Rainbow Project Book List · ala
  7. ACLU case page for A.W. and C.W. v. Davis School District · legal
  8. Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse case record · legal
  9. Penguin Random House author page for Patricia Polacco · creator
  10. Courthouse News report on Davis School District case · news
  11. Goodreads editions list for In Our Mothers' House · bookseller
  12. WorldCat record for In Our Mothers' House · library
  13. Open Library record for Heather Has Two Mommies · library
  14. Second Story Press record for Mom and Mum Are Getting Married · publisher
  15. Penguin Random House record for Donovan's Big Day · publisher
  16. ALA Top Ten Most Challenged Books list · ala
  17. Virginian-Pilot/AP report on Fairfax use of Families · news