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I came across this middle-grade book by Alex Gino thanks to Book Riot. It just happens to fulfill two of the qualifications for Book Riot’s 2016 Read Harder challenge, so I promptly ordered it from the library.
The book is every bit as amazing as Book Riot promised.
It’s about a fourth grader named George who has decided he’s really a girl. To say that George is uncomfortable talking about this with his friends and family is an understatement and totally understandable.
The book is written in third-person limited and every time the author refers to George, they use the feminine pronoun. I won’t lie, that got a little confusing, but it cemented George’s identity for the reader and I quickly got used to it.
George has collected a cache of women’s magazines, which she keeps hidden in a denim bag buried under a pile of unused toys in her closet. She takes them out in private to read about hair and makeup tips, and occasionally brushes her hair forward over her forehead, so it looks like she has bangs, and calls herself Melissa. But she only does this in the strictest privacy.
George’s best friend is a girl named Kelly and she’s pretty great. Like George, she knows who she is and what she wants. Unlike George, she’s not afraid to go after what she wants (largely because she wants the kinds of things girls her age are “supposed to” want). When their school puts on a production of “Charlotte’s Web”, George really, really wants to play Charlotte and Kelly convinces George she should try out for the part. Kelly helps George practice, but when she auditions, her teacher thinks she’s joking and sends her back into the classroom without a part.
Fortunately, a biased teacher isn’t enough to stop a pair of determined friends. Kelly is given the part of Charlotte, and after George “comes out” to her, Kelly comes up with a plan. George has been cast as a crew member to help backstage during the play, which means she has to dress in all black. Kelly’s outfit is all black with a vest with some extra legs. The school is putting on two performances, so Kelly decides to do the first performance as Charlotte, and for the second performance, they switched.
George is fabulous as Charlotte. Better than Kelly (even Kelly said so). When the cast takes their bows and people realize they were watching a boy play a girl’s part, some people are impressed while others are disgusted. The teacher who refused to cast George as Charlotte is among the disgusted, but the principal is impressed and 100% supportive.
George’s mom is less than enthusiastic, but George’s brother, Scott, takes it in stride pretty easily. I think both reactions make a lot of sense for these characters. Everyone had assumed George was gay because of her feminine nature. George says she’s not gay, although admits she hasn’t really thought too much about whether she likes boys or girls (since she’s only in fourth grade at this point, I think that makes sense. It’s probably still a little too early for her to tell). So the transgender thing doesn’t really change a whole lot for Scott. He still has a feminine younger sibling that he needs to look out for because there are going to be people who will bully her.
George’s mom has a harder time with it, but she comes around. I don’t think she can be blamed for her reaction for two reasons: 1) she grew up at a time when the whole idea of transgender was still very new and not accepted by society, and 2) this is not going to be easy for George. A parent’s first instinct is to protect her child and give her everything in life and being transgender will make that very hard for George. I don’t think her resistance to George’s identity is selfish. Quite the contrary.
But she does accept George as she is and suggests that the two of them start seeing a therapist about all this, which is probably a smart move. George asks if she can wear girls clothes and her mom responds with a reasonable, “One step at a time.”
But, once again, Kelly comes to the rescue. Her uncle, who has never met George, has offered to take Kelly and a friend into the city to visit the zoo for the day. Kelly decides it’s the perfect opportunity to dress George up in some of her clothes and call her Melissa. George gets to spend the entire day as a girl and it’s everything she hoped it would be.
The book was very well written and had me rooting for George from the start. I felt sad every time he got bullied or rejected, and I cheered pretty much every time Kelly appeared. She’s the best friend every LGBTQ kid needs. I was so glad the book had a happy ending, both because it resolved the turmoil I experienced while reading the book and because I think it’s important for a transgender kids’ book to have a happy ending. I 100% recommend this book to absolutely everyone.
What did you guys read this week? Anything in a genre that was completely new to you? I want to hear all about it!