A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss

You know, it's funny. When I was watching the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver episode that talks about this book and I heard him say that this wasn't an adult book "telling Mike Pence to go fuck himself," I had a moment of amusement because that was literally exactly what I thought this book was going to be about. You see, Mike Pence has a pet bunny (BOTUS) named Marlon Bundo that has its own Instagram and everything. The second family also recently published a book about their bunny's adventures called MARLON BUNDO'S DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT. This book, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MARLON BUNDO, is published by a staff writer of Last Week Tonight, and if that weren't hilarious enough, they also published their book a day earlier and made the bunny gay.

If you didn't know, Mike Pence is notoriously anti-gay and appears to subtly support conversion therapy, which, if you didn't know, is basically the idea that you can brainwash LGBT+ people into being straight. There's a dark comedy about conversion therapy called But I'm a Cheerleader, which is an amazing movie. RuPaul is in it. (I feel like RuPaul is basically the Kevin Bacon of all things gay - he seems to be connected to everything and everyone of note.) So taking his family pet and writing a gay love story about him is really the perfect revenge. But A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MARLON BUNDO isn't just a low-blow. The writers of Last Week Tonight could have taken the low road with this one and done something crude (albeit funny) but they didn't. Instead, they wrote a children's book about a gay bunny and the importance of voting for change. It was really, really cute and I found myself unexpectedly touched.

The proceeds of this book go to the Trevor Project and AIDS United, which are also great reasons to buy this book (apart from flipping the figurative finger at Mike Pence, of course), but honestly? This is a great tool to use to bring up sexuality with kids. There's nothing sexual about this book at all. It's just about love, and overcoming prejudice by voting for change. It's very empowering, and very cute, and normalizes LGBT+ people without resorting to stereotypes or cheap tropes (there's even a pair of gay kitties in here). It says that it's okay to be different, that everyone is different in their own way, and that we should live in a world where these differences should be celebrated instead of repressed.

I thought this book was really cute and I enjoyed reading it. You should read it, too.

4 out of 5 stars