"Melissa," by Alex Gino
Recommended Age: Grades 4-6
Melissa is about a fourth grade student named George, who
enjoys video games, riding her bike, good books, and joking around with her
best friend, a girl named Kelly.
The close third-person narrator describes George with the pronoun
set she/her/hers, but the rest of the characters use the pronouns he/him/his.
Every gendered pronoun, every gender-segregated school line-up, every reference
to how well-behaved a ‘boy’ she is, causes her emotional pain. The pain from this
mismatch between how others see her and how she sees herself builds to a
boiling point when George auditions for the lead girl’s part in the school play.
How will her friends, family, classmates, and authority figures react to this transgression in the rules of the school play?
One of the things that I enjoyed about this book was how
theater, which has traditionally been a welcoming space for gender nonconforming
and queer students, played a central role in the coming-out narrative for the transgender
main character. This has echoes in my
own experience as a nonbinary person, and I think this detail might act as a
guidepost or a relatable moment for young readers.
Gino writes an engrossing narrative rich in both scene-setting
observations, and in the small, emotionally fraught social details that can either
destroy or rescue an entire week for a child at this age.
The reactions that people in George’s life have to her changing
gender identity could have been lifted out of the diary entries of myself and
my transgender friends. It’s clear that the author is writing about the transgender
experience as someone who has lived it themselves.
This work was highly relatable to me, even though I came to
my nonbinary experience from the ‘opposite’ side, and I recommend it fully to any
young readers of any pronoun set, who are curious about their own gender
nonconformity or identity. This narrative has the potential to help children
who are anything like George feel less alone in their struggle. It might even
help them plan and hope for a better future.
Other readers without this personal connection are still likely
to enjoy for it for its well-told, poignant story about a child coming to terms
with themselves, in a world that both passively and actively fights against her
existence. These difficulties come across as even more challenging to all readers, in today’s political
and cultural climate, which has made existing as a transgender youth literally illegal
in many states, and an unpleasant public debate topic for students who just
want to live as themselves in basically the entire English-speaking world.
Read more about the book at Alex Gino’s personal website.
Word count: 437
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