Are You a Friend of Dorothy? : The True Story of an Imaginary Woman and the Real People She Helped

From Newbery Honor and Stonewall Book Award–winning author Kyle Lukoff and celebrated picture book illustrator Levi Hastings comes a picture book about how people found community in a time when they had to keep their true selves secret.

“Are you a friend of Dorothy?”

In a time when the LGBTQ+ community was forced to hide in the shadows, a woman named Dorothy helped her people find each other in the dark and celebrate themselves in the light.

But who was Dorothy? Was she from the neighborhood, someone’s wife, mother, or sister? Was she that clever writer, who threw parties where there were no rules about who you could and couldn’t dance with? Or was she a girl from Kansas, who dreamed of leaving her black-and-white, small-town life and finding a vibrant, colorful world that loved her?

Dorothy might have been all these things—because Dorothy, as known by the post-WWII queer community, wasn’t real. Still, she helped a community find connection and care amidst adversity.