For the second year in a row, the Children’s and Young Adult winners of the Stonewall Book Awards, presented by ALA’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table, demonstrate a disappointing lack of diversity.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying the five honored titles of 2011 are unworthy of praise. And I think it’s great that two of them explore trans identities. (Almost Perfect, by Brian Katcher — the overall winner — is about a boy who falls in love with a transgender girl. In The Boy in the Dress, by David Walliams, the title character finds joy in cross-dressing.) But when all is said and done, every single main character is a white male.

The same goes for 2010′s honorees, with the exception of Linas Alsenas’s Gay America: Struggle for Equality (a nonfiction book) and Leslea Newman’s two honored board books, which feature babies of indeterminate gender and a possibly Asian dad.

It brings home the general lack of diversity in LGBTQ literature published for kids and teens. As in any genre, there’s a perennial shortage of books starring people of color. The G always dominates the field, with L limping along in second and B and T trailing even farther behind. But still, not a single honored book featuring a female protagonist or a protagonist of color?

Again, I’m not saying the winners aren’t deserving of recognition, and I realize the point of the awards is to recognize the year’s most exceptional literature, not to honor the entire alphabet soup of queer identities. But neither Emily Horner’s A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend nor Cheryl Rainfield’s Scars — both of which got starred reviews from professional journals and featured (white) queer female protagonists — made the Stonewalls’ shortlist. What gives?

For a more longer, more inclusive, and more diverse list of the past year’s LGBTQ books for kids and teens, I suggest taking a look at the ALA Rainbow Project Committee’s 2011 Rainbow List. The list is still skewed toward white dudes, but I think that’s more a reflection of what’s being published than of bias on the part of the committee.

But Stonewall Award committee? I’m keeping an eye on you.