San Francisco's Quiet Archive: Fifty Years of Queer Children's Books Nobody Was Supposed to Keep

By Andy — 2026-08-26 — Literary News

A gay father in San Francisco spent twenty-five years accumulating children's books. Not because he was a hoarder. Because he couldn't find any that showed his family.

The Mechanics' Institute now holds the Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection. Spanning 1969 to 2023, the collection brings together pioneering titles, many of which were published by independent and feminist presses, that were among the first to portray gay, lesbian, and other LGBTQ-headed families in age-appropriate stories.

Over 200 books. All carefully catalogued. Stored in boxes after his twin daughters grew up. That detail matters more than it sounds.

When Randall Tarpey-Schwed and his husband, Mark, became fathers in 2001, the couple wanted books to read to their twin daughters that celebrated the LGBTQ community and families like their own. As their children grew up, so, too, grew their collection of such titles geared toward young readers. But something else happened. Tarpey-Schwed's interest grew into learning more about the backstory to each of the books. Why did they focus on telling stories about queer and transgender people?

He became obsessed with the books themselves. Not sentimental. Scholarly. He wanted to understand what these stories were doing, and why they had to exist at all in the gaps between children's publishing and lesbian bookstores.

This matters because before Tarpey-Schwed's collection had a permanent home, most LGBTQ children's literature from the earliest decades was simply disappearing. Many early titles came from small feminist presses or were self-published. Activist parents, not publishing houses. These books were fragile—literally and culturally. Easy to lose. Easier still to pretend they never existed.

Heather Has Two Mommies, first published in 1989, was one of the first pieces of LGBTQ+ children's literature to garner broad attention. And yet in 1994, the book was the second most challenged book in the nation, following closely on the coattails of Michael Willhoite's Daddy's Roommate. People fought to keep it off library shelves. They wanted it removed, hidden, gone. Which means a collection like this one—sitting in a nonprofit library since 2026—becomes something closer to an act of resistance than a simple archive.

The evolution inside these pages is visible and strange. Early works often explained family origins or confronted prejudice in ways that feel dated today. Newer titles integrate LGBT families more seamlessly into everyday stories of joy, adventure, and belonging.

Think about that difference. The 1989 book had to explain. It had to justify. It had to convince the reader that two mothers raising a daughter was worth documenting.

Now? Now you can have a penguin raising an egg with his partner and call it just another story.

According to Myles Cooper, the library manager at Mechanics' Institute, "early works often explained family origins or confronted prejudice in ways that feel dated today." He worked in San Francisco public schools before joining the Institute. He understands what happens when children don't see themselves reflected anywhere. He also understands what happens when they do.

The collection sits in a 172-year-old institution that doesn't answer to school boards or city councils looking to appease book banners. The Mechanics' Institute was uniquely positioned to host the collection—and protect it during this era of anti-LGBTQ book censorship. That's the unstated reason this archive exists where it does. Not sentiment. Safety.

Tarpey-Schwed's donation at the end of 2025 turned a private collection into public history. His daughters are in their mid-twenties now. They don't need *Heather Has Two Mommies* read to them anymore. But plenty of other kids still do.

Anyone can visit the collection now—researchers, educators, families looking for books their children need. It's archived. Catalogued. Preserved against forgetting.

The real quiet victory? Someone's bedtime stories became someone else's proof that they weren't alone.