I’m a trans parent of a trans teen. (I didn’t do it on purpose. It just worked out that way.) I’m always looking for books by trans authors that accurately reflect transgender experiences at every life stage, but particularly during middle school and the teen years. The books I’ve selected are my favorites because they’re authentic—and because they let readers learn difficult, complicated lessons through fiction. When I’m not writing books, reading books, editing books, or eating books for dessert, I’m caring for my disabled dogs, dirt-biking with my kid, or drawing near an open window with a mug of green tea and some lo-fi beats.
This middle-grade book is a beautiful and sensitive portrayal of a child (Bug) who has never felt quite at home with their assigned gender. Bug’s mom, one of the most loving, caring, and supportive parents I’ve seen in fiction about transgender kids, provides a wonderful example of how to handle a trans child’s gender exploration in a nonjudgmental way. I saw a lot of myself in Bug, and I learned even better ways to support my own transgender child. This book is great for anyone who wants to understand the experience of a transgender kid, and for adults looking for examples of how to be a supportive parent or caregiver.
It's the summer and eleven-year-old Bug's best friend Moira has decided the two of them need to use the next few months to prepare. For Moira, this means figuring out the right clothes to wear, learning how to put on makeup, and deciding which boys are cuter in their yearbook photos than in real life. But none of this is all that appealing to Bug, who doesn't particularly want to spend more time trying to understand how to be a girl. Besides, there's something more important to worry about: A ghost is haunting Bug's eerie old house in rural Vermont...…
Most books with a 13-year-old protagonist tone reality down to get the story past gatekeepers, but this one digs into the gritty mess of what middle school life is actually like, and it’s so refreshing. I’d been searching for a book that accurately reflected my middle-school trans kid’s experience of gender exploration and social interactions that didn’t make eighth-graders sound like fourth graders, and this was it. Pubescent kids talk rough. They arerough. And they laugh constantly to cope with the mobius loop of disasters that is life in the 2020s. I loved how Eli’s experience of gender didn’t fit neatly into a box, and how it was presented as one facet of Eli’s complicated, resilient personality rather than as a single defining feature.
Thirteen-year-old Eli likes baggy clothes, baseball caps, and one girl in particular. Her seventeen-year-old sister Anna is more traditionally feminine; she loves boys and staying out late. They are sisters, and they are also the only family each can count on. Their dad has long been out of the picture, and their mom lives at the mercy of her next drink. When their mom lands herself in enforced rehab, Anna and Eli are left to fend for themselves. With no legal guardian to keep them out of foster care, they take matters into their own hands: Anna masquerades as Aunt…
Hayley and the Hot Flashes
by
Jayne Jaudon Ferrer,
Country music diva Hayley Swift has fallen off the charts and into a funk. Desperate to regain her place in the limelight, she agrees to a low-budget tour of Southern venues, starting with her 35th high school reunion.
There, in an unexpected but fortuitous reconnection, The Girls Next Door —who…
This book is a milestone in transgender literature for kids. Published in 2015, it follows a fourth-grader’s attempts to get classmates, teachers, parents, etc. to see past the surface: she’s a girl named Melissa, not a boy named George as everyone perceives. An argument often leveled against transgender kids is that they can’t knowthey’re transgender because they’re too young. This novel counters that by compassionately and realistically portraying a child who knows her identity from an early age, and it shows how devastating it is when the people who should love and support Melissa instead reject her assertion of her identity. It has a happy ending, but it leaves the reader thinking about how many transgender kids don’tget that—thereby inspiring advocacy.
Formally titled George, this is the unforgettable debut from Alex Gino
"Allow me to introduce you to a remarkable book, full of love, wonder, hope, and the importance of getting to be who you were meant to be. You must read this." - David Levithan, author of Every Day and editor of George.
When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl.
George thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web.…
I love how real this book is. Felix makes big, messy mistakes—the kind most authors are reluctant to write for fear that readers will find their character unlikable. But the truism about how we learn the biggest lessons from the biggest screw-ups is brilliantly illustrated here. This is why we read books: They teach life lessons by example so we don’t have to learn them the hard way ourselves. The trans boy rep is spot-on, and I adored how Felix’s complicated relationship with multiple identities is presented with depth, sensitivity, grace, and good humor. A gorgeous, thought-provoking, and inspiring YA novel about finding yourself and loving who you find.
A Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time
From Stonewall and Lambda Award–winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.
Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too…
Eleven-year-old Mira wishes everything could go back to the way it was. Before she changed schools and had to quit gymnastics. Especially before Papa died. Now she spends her days cooking and cleaning for her stepsisters and Val—who she still won’t call mom and still won’t forgive for the terrible…
“I want to be a boyfriend who is a girl.” — Pen Oliveira, protagonist and all-around badass. While this YA novel isn’t specifically about being trans, it does explore gender from the angle of a girl who dresses like a boy, hangs out with the boys, and likes girls—much to the consternation of her parents. Pen does a lot of heavy thinking about what “girl,” “boy,” “man,” and “woman” mean, whether any of these labels apply to her, and the damage that results when others saddle her with expectations according to their own definitions of those words. I love books that make me rethink my definitions of femininity and masculinity, and this novel gave me a lot to mull over for a long time.
"Fierce. Tender. Unstoppable." is how Lauren Myracle describes M-E Girard's brilliant and addictive debut about the many battles Pen Oliviera faces growing up butch and awesome with no one else like her around for miles. Now in paperback!
"Pen is an inspiration to anyone who's struggled to be understood, and a vital addition to the growing world of genderqueer protagonists." -The New York Times Book Review
Lambda Literary Award Winner * Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2016 * Children's Book Council Books Best Book of 2016 * Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Coming-of-Age Novel…
Two kids team up to save a dog…and wind up saving each other.
Some days Ash is undoubtedly girl; other times, 100% guy. Daniel can’t help how sensitive he is, and he wishes someone would accept him for it. When Daniel’s big heart leads him to rescue a dog, he’s relieved to find Ash willing to help. But when they catch feelings for each other, things get complicated. Daniel thinks Ash is all girl. What happens when he finds out there’s more to Ash’s story? With truth, identity, acceptance, and the life of a lovable dog on the line, will Ash and Daniel forever struggle to fit into the world’s binaries? Or can they embrace the beauty of living in between?
The Birthright of Sons is a collection of stories centered around the experiences of marginalized people, namely Black and LGBTQ+ men. Although the stories borrow elements from various genres (horror, suspense, romance, magical realism, etc.), they are linked by an exploration of identity and the ways personhood is shaped through…