In the first of a series, a young transgender boy named Max is navigating his first day of school. He starts by telling readers what it means to be transgender. “When I look in the mirror I see a boy,” he says. “I also see a boy who is transgender.” He explains, “Trans” means “going across,” as in “transportation.” “Gender” means being a boy or girl, a little of both, or not feeling like either. Max notes that grown-ups often call a baby a boy or a girl at first, but sometimes they’re wrong. His own parents, in fact, first called him a girl. “When I looked in the mirror, I saw a girl. Kind of,” Max relates. “But because I’m transgender, I wanted to see a boy.”
Max’s parents, still figuring this out, buy him a dress for his first day of school, but he “loses” it and wears his favorite overalls instead. When the teacher is calling attendance, Max asserts himself to ask if she can call him Max instead of the name on her list. Max then says in an aside to readers, “I won’t tell you what my old name was. That’s private.” There’s a whole lesson on respect right there, and author Kyle Lukoff conveys it to young readers (and maybe even their parents and teachers) without pedantry.
Max then has to go to the bathroom, and isn’t sure which one to use. He first tries the girls’ bathroom, and a girl runs out when she sees him. When he uses the boys’ bathroom instead, though, kids giggle and point. He decides not to go at all again and not to drink too much water.
Lukoff isn’t afraid to show us the biases Max encounters, but nor does he make this a tale entirely about them; much of the book shows Max making and playing with his friends. “Making friends was easy,” Max tells us in the next chapter. When a new friend, Teresa, asks why he wants to be a boy, he responds that he likes climbing trees and playing with bugs. Teresa calls him out, reminding him that she’s been climbing trees and catching bugs with him all day, and she’s a girl. This is a refreshing counter to many other books about transgender children, particularly trans girls, which veer (intentionally or not) towards reinforcing the idea that being a girl only means liking dresses, nail polish, and glitter. Lukoff sees the gender stereotypes and isn’t having any of them. He tackles the concept from another angle, too, when Max tells his friend Steven that he (Max) can’t be a girl because he hates wearing dresses. Steven, in a dress, tells him he likes both wearing dresses and being a boy. Max seems to understand and responds to his friends that he still knows he’s a boy because he feels like one “on the inside.”
In the final chapter, Max is at home, playing with Steven and Teresa. When his parents hear them call him Max, he explains what happened at school and how he feels like a boy. His parents then talk with the teacher and find a support group for transgender kids. Max explains that they sometimes talk about “serious things, like bathrooms and teasing,” but also about fun things like video games, books, and toys. He even exchanges some of his old girl clothes with girls in the group who give him their old boy clothes. Friendships and things both serious and fun—that’s this book, too, in a nutshell.
Max then tells his class he’s transgender. The boys get used to him in their bathroom, he relates, and “The girls didn’t want me in theirs anyway.” (Grown-ups in states with “bathroom bills,” take note.) He maintains his friendships with Steven and Teresa.
“Being a boy isn’t better than being a girl,” he concludes. “But being myself is the best.”
Cheerful illustrations by Luciano Lozano deftly capture the range of the children’s emotions and show us that these are fun characters that readers will enjoy spending time with. Max looks White; Steven appears to be Black, as does Teresa, although her skin is slightly lighter than Steven’s; she could be read as biracial. Other children and adults are of various skin tones and racial identities.
While the volume is produced in a picture book format with a large cover and full illustrations, it’s broken into (short) chapters, so it slides somewhat into early reader territory. Anything that expands its readership is fine with me, though, especially if it addresses the startling lack of LGBTQ-inclusive early reader books.
