Jesse’s Dream Skirt

Overview

Jesse’s Dream Skirt is represented here by a 40th-anniversary edition of Bruce Mack’s Lollipop Power story about a child who wants a skirt that twirls. The original book appeared in 1979, after an earlier version in Magnus, a socialist journal of gay liberation. Its collection significance comes from the care with which it treats gender expression without forcing an identity label onto Jesse. Marian Buchanan’s reissue writing emphasizes that readers have understood Jesse in several ways: as gender-nonconforming, queer, trans, or simply a child who feels different. The record belongs with Lollipop Power’s anti-sex-role titles and with later LGBTQ-family books because it shows how gender rigidity, peer reaction, adult support, and classroom play became children’s-literature questions.^{[9][10][4][2]}

Before The Lollipop Book

Marian Buchanan documents an earlier 1977 version of Jesse’s Dream Skirt in Magnus, a socialist journal of gay liberation, published under Bruce Mack’s pen name Morning Star. That origin matters because it places the story in a gay liberation print context before its Lollipop Power children’s-book life. The collection item therefore has two publication histories: a movement-period periodical version and a later children’s picture-book version, recovered again through the anniversary edition.^[8][9]

Gender Expression, Not Fixed Label

The safest public language is gender expression. Jesse likes clothing that twirls and glows, and the story follows his desire, his mother’s support, and the mixed reaction of other children. Buchanan explicitly leaves open whether Mack imagined Jesse as gay, trans, a pink boy, or a more broadly out-of-place child. That caution is intellectually useful. It keeps the page from turning a 1970s children’s book into a modern diagnostic label while still recognizing its importance for gender-nonconforming children.^[9][10][1]

The Daycare Scene

The daycare scene gives the book its social structure. Jesse’s mother helps make the skirt, but the harder test comes among children. Some respond with laughter or bullying; teacher Bruce changes the room by joining the play and turning cloth into skirts, dresses, capes, ribbons, and turbans. The scene does not solve gender expression by isolating Jesse as special. It changes the group’s imaginative rules, making the skirt a shared play object rather than a stigma.^[1][2][9]

Reissue And Recovery

The anniversary edition is not merely a new copy of an old book. Buchanan’s posts document permission, reprint work, and a return to circulation after the original became scarce. That recovery is part of the object’s meaning. Small-press feminist and gay liberation children’s books often disappeared from ordinary availability, then returned through collectors, illustrators, educators, and community memory. The collection can use this item to show how access sometimes means reprinting and preserving, not only shelving.^[11][10][12]

Timeline

1. 1977Magnus versionAn earlier version appears in Magnus under the name Morning Star.^[8][9]
2. 1979Lollipop editionLollipop Power publishes Jesse’s Dream Skirt.^[2][4]
3. 1979Lollipop family historyWhen Megan Went Away appears in the same year.^[13][14]
4. 1994Bruce Mack’s deathBuchanan records Mack’s death from AIDS complications.^[8]
5. 1999Education useBuchanan notes inclusion in Preventing Prejudice.^[10]
6. 2019-2020Anniversary recoveryBuchanan secures permission and makes the reissue available.^[11][10]

Publication And Recovery

The title moved from periodical story to Lollipop picture book to anniversary reissue.

Citation

Jesse’s Dream Skirt. Bruce Mack; illustrated by Marian Buchanan. Zoetic Endeavours / Lollipop Power history, 2019. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-159.

Sources

Image from Marian Buchanan.

1. Local collection catalog record for Jesse's Dream Skirt (40th Anniversary Edition with New Foreword) · catalog
2. Open Library record · library
3. Open Library alternate record · library
4. UNC finding aid for Lollipop Power records · archive
5. WUNC feature on Lollipop Power · news
6. Open Library creator record · library
7. Duke alumni profile for Phyllis Hacken Johnson · institution
8. Marian Buchanan on Bruce Mack · creator
9. Marian Buchanan on versions of Jesse’s Dream Skirt · creator
10. Marian Buchanan reissue availability post · creator
11. Marian Buchanan reprint permission post · creator
12. Woodland Pattern page for Jesse’s Dream Skirt · bookseller
13. Open Library record for When Megan Went Away · library
14. Mombian retrospective on When Megan Went Away · article