Photo by Midge Eliassen

It's been 42 years since Annie On My Mind, by Nancy Garden, was published in 1982, and 10 years this month since Garden died, on June 24, 2014. In her groundbreaking book, in which two fairly conventional white girls, 17, fall in love and meet neither an untimely death nor any other version of punishment that was the then-popular way of dealing with the topic of homosexuality in most of popular fiction: the relationship ends when one of them moves away. 

[Read: 9 Biographies and Memoirs to Celebrate LBGTQIA+ Lives]

Pride Month was still a few years away when the book was first published; Pride Week was established a year after the infamous June 1969 riot at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. But the teenagers who found Annie and read it and shared it weren't tracking the decades' long blossoming of gay pride at the national level; they were just grateful to come across a book that finally showed them a teenage romance they understood. Just last year, SLJ's YA Best Books list included the heirs apparent of Annie, in novels such as A Guide to the Dark and I Can't Say No to a Lonely Girl, and in graphic novels such as Sunhead by Alex Assan and Imogen, Obviously.

[Read: 15 Graphic Novels to Celebrate Pride]

When Garden died, SLJ's own Mahnaz Dar, now a senior editor at Kirkus Reviews, wrote a stunning, long form essay and tribute that remembered the book, and the subsequent bannings, including words from Pat Scales, our regular contributor on censorship.

Yes, censorship. It's easy to read the tribute and the part about book bans and think how nothing has changed. But oh, hasn't it just?

Annie On My Mind paved the way for hundreds of other books on a host of LBGTQIA+ subjects long before the acronym was created. There are now ways for children of all ages to address feelings without shame, to locate characters with hearts and minds and the ability to love as they do, and to feel empowered by books where gay young people (or trans or bi or ace) are part of the narrative. Nancy Garden normalized love for a whole generation, so during Pride Month, and the month she died, we hope you'll revisit her legacy.