This cheery, chapter-book-level biography of the pop star begins with her childhood, where she loved to dress up in costumes and show her imagination and creativity. Still, we learn, she felt that she didn’t fit in with the people she met at the church her family attended, and “was secretly very sad much of the time.”
Music helped her feel happy, though, and she began performing and auditioning—not always with success, but with perseverance. She moved to Los Angeles to further her career, and it was there that she realized she was a lesbian, “which means that she falls in love with other women.” Finding others like herself made her feel less alone, the book says. We also see how her friendships with other musicians, like Olivia Rodrigo, helped boost her success so that she could take off on a tour of her own.
On that tour, we read, Chappell decided she wanted to uplift other members of the LGBTQ+ community, and invited local drag queens to perform with her. Fans thought her shows were “incredibly fun.”
The book continues her story through her 2025 Grammy Award, noting that she used her Grammy speech to stand up for musicians being treated unfairly by their record labels, just as she had been. The volume concludes by emphasizing the many years of hard work that she put in to gain her success, and how she is now using her fame to stand up for others, and to advocate for mental health and for the LGBTQ+ community. When she was younger, she felt like she didn’t fit in, and now she is helping others see “that they are special and that they belong.”
While in some ways, this is a very straightforward biography, appropriately simplified for the age group, it does a nice job of showing Chappell’s evolution as a person, not just a performer, and why she inspires so many.
A timeline and short bibliography round out the recommended volume.
