Martin's Father

Overview

Martin's Father is an early Lollipop Power picture book by Margrit Eichler, illustrated by Bev Magennis, with a local record dated 1977 and public records pointing to a 1971 first publication and a later second edition. The book is important because it centers a father doing ordinary care work: cooking, laundry, bathing, play, and bedtime. It should not be treated as a gay-father book without evidence. Its stronger role is as a nonsexist family-role object, showing a father as domestic, tender, and competent. That makes it a precursor to later LGBTQ-family titles in the collection. It challenges the assumption that children need rigidly gendered parental functions, and it does so through ordinary daily care rather than through public controversy or explicit identity language.^{[20][21][1][26]}

Nurturing Fatherhood

The central public value of Martin's Father is its representation of a father doing care work. The local record describes cooking, laundry, bathing, play, and bedtime, all activities often assigned to mothers in older children's books. By making fatherhood domestic and tender, the book challenges gendered assumptions without needing to declare a sexuality identity. That makes it a precise precursor object: it loosens the rules around parental roles before later books name gay or lesbian parents directly.^[1][20][26]

Single-Parent Family Form

Educational sources connect Martin's Father to nonsexist reading and one-parent family contexts. That matters because the book does not have to overexplain family structure to make its point. It simply shows a father and child moving through daily life. The absence of a mother figure becomes part of the reading, but not as crisis. Instead, the story gives ordinary competence and affection to a household that does not rely on the old division between maternal care and paternal distance.^[27][28][21]

Race And Domestic Visibility

The local record identifies Martin and his father as African American, and educational bibliographies place the title near ethnic-minority and nonsexist categories. That pairing should be handled carefully but not ignored. The item can show how progressive picture books sometimes worked across several representational questions at once: race, family form, domestic labor, and gender expectation. A Black father shown as nurturing and ordinary broadens the collection's account of family visibility beyond couple structure alone.^[1][29][6]

Eichler's Later Scholarship

Margrit Eichler's later career makes the book unusually interesting. Toronto records identify her as a feminist sociologist connected to women's studies, family research, reproductive technologies, and nonsexist methods. That later scholarship does not turn the picture book into a sociology text, but it gives the early children's book a meaningful creator arc. Martin's Father can be read as a small-press children's expression of concerns Eichler later pursued through academic work on families and nonsexist research.^[30][31][22]

Timeline

1. 1942Eichler bornToronto records identify Margrit Eichler as born in Berlin in 1942.^[30]
2. 1970Lollipop Power beginsLollipop Power emerged as a feminist children's publishing collective.^[11][12]
3. 1971First publicationOpen Library records place Martin's Father in Lollipop Power's early 1970s publishing.^[20]
4. 1974Nonsexist booklistsERIC sources place Martin's Father in nonsexist educational bibliography contexts.^[26]
5. 1977Second-edition recordOpen Library identifies a 1977 Lollipop Power record as a second edition.^[21]
6. 1979When Megan Went AwayLollipop Power later published an early lesbian-parent picture book.^[14][15]
7. 1987/1988Nonsexist researchEichler later published work on nonsexist research methods.^[31][30]

Citation

Martin's Father. Margrit Eichler; illustrated by Bev Magennis. Lollipop Power, 1977. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-138.

Sources

Image from WUNC; photo credited there to Marjorie Fowler.

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