Marlon Bundo Goes Ham

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, written by Jill Twiss and illustrated by EG Keller, is a children’s book about the gay romance between two bunnies, the homophobia they encounter, and the process of overcoming homophobia. The book is pretty simplified without representation of trans or nonbinary people/animals or even bisexual people/animals. On the other hand, it does stress the importance of advocating for oneself and others, and political participation and voting.

As part of a segment on then-Vice President Mike Pence, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight created and sold a children’s book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. Mike Pence has never admitted to being homophobic, but he has maintained a friendship with James Dobson, founder of the conversion therapy group Focus on the Family. The inspiration for the book is the Pence family’s real-life bunny, Marlon Bundo, and the book Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, written by Charlotte Pence and illustrated by Karen Pence (wife and daughter respectively). Proceeds from both books went to charity: Tracy’s Kids and The A21 Campaign for the original and The Trevor Project and AIDS United for the parody.

The biggest problem from the book is what’s not in the book rather than what is there. It does not appear that either Twiss or Keller are apart of the LGBTQ+ community, nor was there any LGBTQ+ consultants in the production of the book. The book only features gay and straight characters, making no reference to trans, nonbinary, or bisexual people. This is very unfortunate especially because there is a section of the book that highlights people’s differences. The book talks about differences between people to normalize gay people, listing things like “reading the end of books first,” and “sniffing butts” (said by a dog). This could have been a to mention other people, identities, etc. Of course you do run the risk of coming off as insensitive as the other options are mostly jokes. Another problem is that the book never says the word “gay.”

Despite these problems the book succeeds in many ways, namely teaching the reader to advocate for better rights. When the main characters, Marlon Bundo and Wesley, want to get married, the stink bug (standing in for Vice President Pence) gets mad and refuses to let them. In response, the other animals band together to vote him out. Promoting political participation is a central plot point and takes center stage. The book is able to have active main characters that advocate for themselves while still showing that it requires communities to band together to make change.

The book is good for children.