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 like hanging out with their best friends, Daisy Adewumi and Ash Choudhary, who were immediately accepting when Jamie came out as nonbinary. Their mum and dad get their pronouns right “almost all of the time”; their gay older brother (who does drag) is happy to have another queer person in the family; and even the teachers and other kids at school have been pretty supportive.
Then the teachers tell the students that they have to start thinking about moving on to middle school—but the only choices 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. Jamie later comes to see that their perceived acceptance was likely just biding time, hoping that Jamie’s nonbinary identity was simply a phase.
Together with Daisy and Ash, however, Jamie decides to take action. Their friendship is tested, though, when Jamie doesn’t at first see the difficulties the school choice is causing for Ash and Daisy, too, as they will also be split up by the gendered middle schools, with no say in the matter. And regardless of which school Jamie chooses, Jamie will be there with one friend and not the other.
Jamie eventually comes to understand their friends’ perspectives, however, and the three are soon making another attempt to create change. 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.
Author L.D. Lapinski is best known for their terrific Strangeworlds Travel Agency series, which has two queer protagonists whose queerness is incidental to the plots. We need books like that—not every book with a queer protagonist should be “about” their queer identity. Here, however, Lapinski takes the opposite approach, making the book very much about a character’s queer identity and other people’s reactions to it. We need books like this, too, especially ones where the author blends an educational intent with an engaging and delightful storyline.
In Jamie, Lapinski deftly weaves in information about what it means to be nonbinary, as well as affirming observations like, “Being non-binary is great. It’s one of the things I like best about myself…. It’s only other people who make being transgender difficult at all.” In between the chapters are interstitial asides from Jamie about various words related to nonbinary identities—a way to add some additional definitions without weighing down the main story. Additionally, the book never deadnames Jamie or indicates the gender they were assigned at birth, both of which would have been unnecessary details and bad examples of usage.
While there’s a pedagogical intent here, however, it’s all wrapped in Lapinski’s skilled storytelling, with a dash of humor and an engaging cast of characters. It 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.
Jamie and their family read as White; Daisy as Black; and Ash as South Asian. The book is published by the Yellow Jacket imprint of Little Bee Books, in partnership with GLAAD.
