Are Cozy Animal Stories Cozying up to Gay Ideology?

One of our readers alerted us to Katherine Applegate’s latest book, as it seemed to her to feature a lesbian relationship.

Odder, picturing a beyond-cute protagonist on the cover, is a novel-in-verse about a female sea otter who was born with an extra “spark”: a questing spirit, a taste for adventure. After a storm separates her from her mother, she’s rescued by humans of the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Sea Otter Research and Conservation Program. (Odder can’t identify the place and the program, but the author does that in her afterword). The humans complete her absent mother’s training as best they can before returning the adventuresome pup to the sea.

There she meets and bonds with Kiari, an older-and-wiser otter who appreciates Odder’s exuberant spirit but warns against its excesses. Kiari’s warnings don’t prevent her friend’s near-fatal encounter with a shark. Fortunately, Monterrey Bay Aquarium comes to the rescue again, but this time the humans determine, after rehab, that Odder can no longer survive in the wild. They give her a name: Jazz. A name instead of a number means she’ll never go back to the sea. But a new and meaningful life awaits with Kiari, who has also been rescued and now serves as a surrogate mom to other abandoned otter pups. Odder/Jazz resists this fate at first but finds love with an abandoned pup of her own. What seemed barely tolerable becomes rewarding and joyful—which at least gives a nod of approval to motherhood.

Are close animal friendships intended to echo homosexual human relationships?

Does the friendship of Odder and Kiari echo a lesbian relationship? There’s no sexual angle to it—which certainly wouldn’t belong in a children’s book. But the only male otter in the entire book is the pup that Odder eventually adopts. I don’t know enough to say if disattachment between the sexes is common among otters as it is with other species (like deer, where, after mating, the males go their own way and the females form groups with their fawns).

I’ve noticed warm female relationships in two other animal novels I’ve rated highly. In Violet & Jobie in the Wild, mouse siblings are booted out of their secure home to fend for themselves in nature. Brother Jobie eventually finds a mate and settles into happy domesticity, while his more adventurous sister Violet travels to exotic places with a close female friend. In Cress Watercress the title character, an inquisitive rabbit, “falls in love” with a daring wild rabbit of the same sex. In the context I take this as a “girl crush” similar to Anne Shirley’s feelings for Diana Barry when they first meet: an intense fellowship that moderates over time. It’s a sad commentary on our age that close same-sex friendships are often assumed to have a sexual dimension. (And in fact, a new “remix” version of Anne of Green Gables assumes exactly that.)

Animal stories are really about people

Animal stories, even though the best of them create characters with believable animal traits, are really about people. Do the female relationships in Odder, Violet & Jobie, and Cress Watercress suggest a lesbian character? I don’t know if the authors intended anything of the sort, though in todays publishing atmosphere it’s certainly possible. YA novelist Elliot Schrefer has just published a nonfiction book called Queer Ducks (and Other Animals: The Natural World of Animal Sexuality. Judging by the table of contents, Schrefer attempts to prove that same-sex “mating,” and even some form of trans identity (!) is not only “natural” among animals but normal.

Animal stories are a staple of children’s literature since forever, so it’s not surprising if today’s obsessions over sexual identity show up even there. But we don’t have to take it that way. In fact, young children who haven’t been exposed to queer ideology in school won’t take it that way. Close same-sex friendships are not only possible but valuable, and as much as these stories model that, we can read them with pleasure and enlightenment. “To the pure all things are pure.”

About Odder (Feiwel & Friends, 2022, 282 pages): as is fitting for an accomplished writer and verse-novel format, there are some lilting and lyrical passages about the beauty and danger of the sea. Even though no one has any idea what’s going on in an otter’s mind, Applegate makes a reasonable stab at it. She’s spent time observing otter interaction at the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, and those observations enrich the narrative. The humans in the story come across as rather clueless but well-meaning. Odder could make a nice read-aloud and some children will be entranced by it. Others may be put off or disengaged by the occasional undertone of sadness and the grownup theme of becoming a “mother” to an orphan pup. While the narrative doesn’t acknowledge a transcendent being outside of nature, it doesn’t discourage such an idea, and Christian readers can delight in these lively creatures as their Creator surely does.

Overall rating: 3.75

• Worldview/moral value: 3.5
• Artistic/literary value: 4.5

Read more about our ratings here.                 

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: Other books by Katherine Applegate are the Newbery-winning The One and Only Ivan, Wishtree, and the Doggo and Pupper chapter-book series.
• Reflections: For approaching the subject with older kids, see Hayley’s post on Reading and Talking about Sexuality–with book suggestions!

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