The most recommended books about identity

This is the first book I discovered that helped me understand what was happening to my daughter after she told me she identified as “trans.” I learned about the vulnerability of girls to social contagions by peers and social media influencers.

Although I was baffled by reading that gender-affirming care doesn’t address the root cause of a girl’s distress and instead helps her rush into a medicalized model with long-term, adverse health effects, it confirmed my family’s experience.

This book boosted my confidence to advocate for young people to address and heal what lies beneath the proclamation that they were born in the wrong body, and it also helped me understand the potential damage caused by gender drugs and surgeries.

I firmly believe that Halloween books are for everyone, even kids who don’t want their pants scared off or kids who aren’t big readers. In comes Lumberjackula! An adorable graphic novel with a great Halloween esthetic.

Jack is a half vampire, half lumberjack kid who has to make a big decision: should he go to Lumberjack school like Mom wants, or Vampire school like Dad wants? Jack doesn’t want to disappoint either parent, but he has a secret…he wants to dance!

Lumberjackula has all the fun of Halloween without the fear, and the illustrations are adorable. It’s a great book to make sure all of your middle graders get to join in the Halloween fun. (And as a former goth myself, Dad’s band is awesome!)

When I was young, I quickly developed a taste for sci-fi. Thanks to my father, I also learned to love murder mysteries. I still remember us watching Columbo together.

My love for those genres makes it feel like The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was written for me. At first glance, the setting is normal, a country house in the 1920s. The twist is that there’s a time loop, and the only way to break it is for the protagonist to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle.

Even better, for every loop, the protagonist has his consciousness awakening in a different body, allowing him to experience the events through multiple points. This setting allows for a complex, dazzling narrative filled with twists and turns. I can’t recommend it enough.

I’ve always been deeply fascinated with any amnesia-related plot. A teenager who survives a near-death experience and cannot remember the last several years of her life? And, despite this being YA novel, as an older reader, I could not put this book down. It kept me guessing, constantly deducing as everything unfolded, and though the main characters are young, their emotional processes are so raw and beautiful. I’ve reread this one many a time. For any Nancy Drew gamers out there, The Secret History of Us is like a ND game/Nicholas Sparks’ novel hybrid.

Is this a children’s book? Yes. Yes, it is. Since ten-year-old me can still remember reading it, however, (particularly a paragraph about how special it was to be able to read and write in sixth-century China—which blew ten-year-old me’s mind) it’s still going on the list. Lady of Ch’iao Kuo is also one of the Scholastic Royal Diaries series, which I devoured as a younger reader, and is fabulous as a whole. It includes both well-known (another Elizabeth I book? Yep) and more obscure historical figures, all written about in a way that allows children to connect to them. Highly recommended for both the young and young at heart!

Cuckoo Song is not just a book about growing up, it’s a book about growing up in an environment where you suddenly don’t fit in.

Triss is a character I instantly related to. Once young adulthood hit, I found I’d pulled away from the rest of my family, a black sheep. Wrong. In Cuckoo Song, Triss bravely faces her darkest fears in order to find the truth of herself. And though it might be terrifying, it is her truth, and she will claim it.

Technically, this is a children’s book. However, I’ve loved it from the moment I read it the first time.

Since then, I lost count of the number of times I’ve read it. It is a fantasy book with a little mystery tied to the end. What an excellent plot twist. I’ve always been a daydreamer and this story is exactly the kind of thing I’d love.

I adored this Young Adult novel, which follows 17-year-old Marlowe adjusting to life – adjusting the fact that she will, indeed, have a life – following a heart transplant.

Born with a congenital defect, Marlowe has spent many years preparing to die; now she must learn how to live, including returning to school, negotiating friendships and romance, and visualising a future for herself. I was particularly moved by Marlowe’s efforts to find the family of her donor, who in turn want nothing to do with her.

Happy endings can be messy too, and this short, sweet novel encompasses a huge gamut of emotions. 

Tae Keller turns the sci-fi conceit of the weird kid who believes in aliens into a heartbreaking tale of friendship and bullying.

Mallory abides by the social rules of middle school, whereas her new neighbor, Jennifer, disregards them completely. When Jennifer disappears, Mallory decides to find her, using clues from the missing girl’s journals. Along the way, she has to confront the part she and her friends played in Jennifer’s disappearance.

Keller digs deep into the painful process of trying to fit in. This is a tough, worthwhile read.

When we talk about the need to read Jewish history in the Middle East within its original context, and within the understanding that Jews lived among non-Jews, interacted with non-Jews, and had a tremendous influence on their respective societies, from time to time, we need to change the perspective and see how their non-Jewish compatriots viewed them and remember them. In this book, Aomar Boum recorded the ways in which the Muslims of Morocco remember the large Jewish communities that lived in that country for millennia and shrunk to a fraction of their former self after 1956-1967. This book allows us to examine multiple perspectives simultaneously. The national and colonial identities, the essence of Middle Eastern Zionism, and the place of the memory of Jews after they had left in the modern societies.