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George | March 9, 2016

by Alex Gino (Scholastic Press, August 2015)

On the outside, the titular character in Alex Gino’s George seems like your average fourth grader. George is sensitive. George is an avid reader. George has to have a glass of chocolate milk before bedtime. And George wants to be in the school play, an adaptation of E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. George dreams of being Charlotte, only to be told to audition for Wilbur instead. And therein lies George’s “problem;” George is a girl, but only she knows it.

While YA fiction has tackled issues surrounding transgender representation for over a decade now, George deftly adapts the trans conversation for the middle-grade set. The novel is refreshing in its lack of didacticism. Since George is only beginning to understand what terms like “transgender” and “transitioning” mean, the book steers clear of any textbook explanations or easy answers. Instead, the book mines the subject for pathos to help the reader understand the extent of the issue. Just like how Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web wasn’t your average spider, George isn’t your average girl, and the hardships George faces because of her outsider status resonate on multiple levels.

George is a book about small victories, and the bigger implications of those victories. Gino realizes that George, within the universe of the story and in the real world, will never change some people’s minds or win everyone over. Some may always struggle to see George as who she really is. So when George does succeed—be it at winning Mario Kart or getting to go to the zoo as “Melissa”—her victories feel especially triumphant. She is changing her world in incremental, but vital ways.

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