The great middle grade titles keep rolling in, and this week we have a two-girl crush, a summer camp graphic novel with a nonbinary protagonist (and a crush), a nonbinary kid making a place for themself (with a little help from some friends), and the autobiography of Olympic gold medalist Caster Semenya.
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Noah Frye Gets Crushed, by Maggie Horne, is a humorous but insightful novel about shifting middle-school social circles, crushes, and coming out.
Twelve-year-old Noah Frye is looking forward to seventh grade. Her new best friend from camp, Jessa, is moving to Noah’s small hometown in Canada, and will be going to school with Noah and her two other best friends, Zoey and Luna. But something’s changed about Zoey and Luna, who now only want to talk about the boys they have crushes on.
Noah, however, doesn’t have an interest in boys, but being of a scientific mindset, decides to run an experiment. If she pretends to have a crush on a boy, will it turn into a real crush and help things return to normal with her friends? It’s not too hard to guess from the inclusion of the book here that Noah eventually realizes her crush has been misplaced, and she actually likes girls. Horne provides both humor and empathy throughout, weaving in an unexpected dash of queer community support and allyship as Noah navigates her own insecurities, assumptions, and friendships on the way to greater self-awareness. A few additional twists that I won’t spoil help make this an even more delightful read and a highly recommended title.
Upstaged, written and illustrated by Robin Easter (Little, Brown Ink) is a fun summer camp graphic novel with a sweet queer romance.
Ash is looking forward to their last summer at Highland Arts Camp before high school. They’ll be stage manager for the camp’s performance of the musical Ella—and even better, will be reuniting with best friend (and blooming crush) Ivy, with whom they’ve shared a cabin every year. This year is different, however, full of changes and new feelings. Can Ash patch things up with Ivy and with other friends when things go awry, and maybe even tell Ivy how they really feel about her?
Ash’s nonbinary identity is never an “issue,” although it becomes an asset in ways that I won’t spoil. Another nonbinary camper and a gay one add to the normalization of queer characters here (as do the all-gender cabins). All told, it’s a highly recommended title.
Jamie, by L. D. Lapinski (Yellow Jacket/Little Bee, in partnership with GLAAD), is an inspiring and fun tale of a nonbinary kid working to make a place for themselves in their community.
Fifth-grader Jamie Rambeau lives in Nottingham, England, and thinks life is pretty good. They’re supported by family and friends. Then Jamie’s teachers tell the students that their only choices for moving on to middle school are a boy’s school or a girls’ school. Jamie feels like there’s no place for them. Their parents, whom they thought were accepting, don’t even realize there’s a problem.
Together with Daisy and Ash, however, who are also impacted by the decision that will split their friend group, Jamie decides to take action. This leads to a rooftop protest that becomes much more than they expected. I won’t spoil too much, except to say that it’s a happy ending—but not so perfect that it feels unrealistic or saccharine.
Lapinski deftly weaves in information and affirmations about what it means to be nonbinary, but while there’s a pedagogical intent here, it’s all wrapped in their skilled storytelling, with a dash of humor and an engaging cast of characters. This is an uplifting, warm-hearted story about a queer kid standing up and creating a space for themselves, with the help of a few allies—an accidental activist who rises to the challenge. At the same time, it shows how rigid gender rules can harm all children, LGBTQ and otherwise. A highly recommended read.
The Race to Be Myself: Young Readers Edition, by Caster Semenya (Norton), is the autobiography of the two-time Olympic gold medalist and three-time world track champion, here adapted for middle grade readers. In the prologue, she explains that at age 18, after winning the world championships, she was “forced to undergo a humiliating medical procedure” to prove that she was a woman. Although now knows she is intersex, she says, she doesn’t see herself that way, asserting, “Even though I am built differently than other women, I am a woman.”
Semenya then takes us back to her childhood growing up in a small village in newly post-apartheid South Africa, where she always felt like “a different kind of girl,” uninterested in the same things other girls were, and finding a passion and success in athletics. She also shares her early recognition that “When I grow up, I’m going to marry a woman”—and her later marriage to a fellow track athlete, with whom she has two children.
As her wins increased and her fame as an athlete grew, though, some began to question her success. She was subjected to unwanted exams and forced to take hormones to reduce her naturally high levels of testosterone in order to compete. Semenya shares wrenching anecdotes about the many negative mental and physical effects of such hormones and her long legal battles to compete—and live—as herself, battles often tinged with racial prejudice as well. Nevertheless, Semenya writes, “At the end of the day, I live for those I love, I live for the people who believe in the work I do. I mind my business, and I don’t back down from any challenge.” This story of a world-class athlete will likely be an inspiring volume to many readers for many different reasons.
