A sympathetic and informative first-person story based loosely on the life of co-author Maddox Lyons, a 12-year-old transgender boy. The protagonist struggles against his well-meaning mom’s attempts to have her dress like a girl on many occasions. “I’m not a girl,” he insists. On one page, in a nice touch, he admires a poster of famous women and says, “I know girls are really cool. I’m just not one.” That’s an important message for readers, especially young ones who might mistakenly assume trans boys and men want to transition because there’s something wrong with being a girl/woman in general. There’s not, if you are one. The protagonist, however, isn’t.
Eventually, the protagonist’s frustrated mom lets him pick out any swimsuit he likes, and he chooses boy’s shorts and a swim shirt. At the pool, he meets two new friends, who assume he’s a boy but are confused when his father calls him by a girl’s name. He insists he’s a boy, and the friends say he’s like their transgender cousin, who’s actually a girl, although the family had thought otherwise. This gives the protagonist the courage and the language to talk with his parents about his identity. The book closes with him happily getting a boy’s short haircut.
The protagonist and his family are White; his new friends are Black. An afterward by Lyons’ mother, Verdi, and Simpson (a transgender woman herself) offers additional insight, as does a list of famous transgender people and additional resources. This is a sympathetic and personal account of transition that should find many fans.
