“The simple answer is we were all once children”
BY LIZZIE HUXLEY JONES, IMAGE BY JAMIE DREW
Sometimes I’m asked, with all the well-meaning in the world, why I write books with queer representation for children. The simple answer is we were all once children.
I certainly was a confused miscellaneously queer child wondering why no one seemed to think or feel like me until I accidentally discovered Sugar Rush on S4C at midnight, at a time when I was trying to conform to heterosexual-femininity instead of the androgyny I craved. I’m sure many of us brushed up against our first feelings for someone else when we were twelve or thirteen, be they a classmate or a famous person for us to project onto. And twelve, it turns out, is what we call the “middle grade” age range, who I write for. That messy, heady time when so much change is about to hit you like a truck.
In my children’s fantasy series that begins with Vivi Conway And The Sword Of Legend, there are a lot of queer characters. Vivi, the eponymous main character, vocalises that she imagines marrying another girl one day. Dara is non-binary, and their only gender-agonising is frustration from how other people expect them to be or act. Between the cast, there are held hands, stolen glances, blushing cheeks (and ears). These kids know, or work it out, and it’s no big deal at all. Just like how it should be.
I think people find my urge to write good disabled and particularly autistic characters easier to understand. After all, I’m pretty loud (one might even call gobby) when it comes to talking about and normalising disability, and that’s often the reason that schools want me to come talk to the students. Sorry if you follow me online, you’ll be very familiar. In my books, Vivi is autistic, Stevie has a limb difference, Merry has Ehler’s Danlos syndrome; there’s a few different types of representation there. And the distorting, disorientating dream magic Vivi experiences is drawn from my own time-warping seizures. My experiences as a disabled person are woven into the fabric.
I do think sometimes there’s a nervousness about writing queer content for children, but it requires the same honesty as writing about autistic meltdowns, or the way my character Meredith’s joints come out of place at will, just like my own. It’s about saying hey, maybe there’s something different here, here’s how I live.
And I’m glad to do it. Over the years, I’ve met a number of children who stand out in my head and heart. Kids who whisper as I sign a paperback or a bookmark for them that they too are a bit like me. We don’t have to specify why or how, unless they want to – the autistic kids usually tell me exactly how alike we are – but I know how powerful that moment is, seeing something even a little bit more like yourself on paper, or in another person. It’s a kind of magic, really.
In publishing, we talk a lot about reading for empathy so we can learn about other people, but honestly, it’s the different kids I write for. The kids who need a mirror of some kind, and an escape too. The only bad guy in my books is a monstrous Otherworld guy who wants to take over the world, using the main cast to get what he wants (or so he hopes).
Anyway, I’ve got a few events this summer, and it’s those kids I’ll be looking out for. The kids who are just a little like me. I hope the Vivi series can be their safe haven.
Out Now, Vivi Conway And The Lost Hero written by Lizzie Huxley-Jones, published by Knights Of 2025. Cover illustration by Harry Woodgate.
Lizzie Huxley-Jones (they/them) is an autistic author and editor based in South London. They grew up in Rhuddlan, North Wales, and spent their childhood romping around the old castles, windswept coastline, awe-inspiring mountains, and deep lakes of the Welsh landscape. In previous jobs, they’ve worked as a research diver, a children’s bookseller and a digital communications specialist. They are the editor of Stim, an anthology of autistic authors and artists, published in April 2020 to coincide with World Autism Awareness Week. They are also the author of the children’s biography Sir David Attenborough: A Life Story (2020), the queer holiday rom-coms Make You Mine This Christmas (2022) and Under The Mistletoe With You (2024), the YA summer romance Hits Different (2024) cowritten with Tasha Ghouri, and a contributor to the anthology Allies: Real Talk About Showing Up, Screwing Up, And Trying Again (2021), which was chosen to be a World Book Day title for 2023, renamed as Being an Ally (2023).
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