A first-person middle-grade novel about a transgender boy making a new friend who only knows him as the boy he is.
Eleven-year-old Marcus is traveling with his mother from their home in Stockholm to the city of Malmö, where she’ll be working for the summer as a voiceover actor. Shortly after they arrive, Marcus meets Mikkel, a neighborhood boy whose aggressive attitude is off-putting at first, though Marcus admires his cool tattoos (actually ink drawings by Mikkel’s brother).
When Mikkel challenges Marcus to a skateboarding competition to determine who is the “king,” Marcus, an avid skateboarder, happily accepts—but when Marcus has an accident, Mikkel helps him and declares them to be “blood brothers.”
Marcus is thrilled to have made a friend who sees him this way. In an interstitial chapter, he explains to readers that “I’m a boy, but I was born with a vulva.” He’s done his research and knows he’s not the only one, and that there are also girls with penises. He explains a little more about his early gender journey, always knowing he was a boy and finally telling his parents.
His mother has been nothing but accepting; his father, however, has struggled to understand and accept Marcus’ true identity, although he hasn’t rejected him outright. His grandmother thinks this is just a phase. The kids at school have had mixed reactions as well; some harassing Marcus and others defending him. We can see why finding a friend in a new place, who only knows him as a boy, is a welcome occurrence.
Author Jenny Jägerfeld also makes a nice point by mentioning one character, Marcus’s aunt, who is almost too enthusiastic, always talking about Marcus’s gender, saying what a “fantastic” job his mom is doing by accepting him, and how strong he is to be “doing his thing.” Marcus clearly finds this annoying; he just wants to live his life. In another notable scene, Marcus asks his mom to paint his nails. She hesitates at first, surprised he still wants to do that. “Why wouldn’t I?” Marcus asks—and she realizes that painted nails do not a gender make.
But when Mikkel learns of Marcus’s birth identity, he doesn’t understand at first, thinking that Marcus was lying about being a boy. To Marcus, however, the greater lie would have been pretending to be a girl. Is this the end of their friendship? I’ll discuss the ending in white on white below; click and drag over the area if you want to know.
Marcus finds the courage to explain to Mikkel (and again for readers) that he’s a boy with a vulva, but also that he’s a skater, an ice cream lover, and a boy, in his whole body, brain, and heart. Mikkel then gets it, and once again refers to Marcus as “bro” and “the king.” Their friendship continues, and although Marcus goes back to Stockholm, they keep in touch and sometimes visit. Marcus’s dad, too, has made strides and is more accepting of Marcus’s identity.
Jägerfeld is a psychologist who has worked with children and teens, and seems generally understanding of tween minds and lingo—but the book leans heavily on the trope of a trans person “hiding” who they are, only to have it found out by someone who feels they were being duplicitous. As a cisgender person, I leave it to trans readers to decide if this feels like a useful, authentic experience to be portraying, or simply a trope.
Jägerfeld also has Marcus’s dad refer to him by his deadname at one point. While this feels realistic for where the dad character is at, I have also read books (like The House That Whispers and Jude Saves the World) where the trans narrator swaps in their chosen name even when relating times when they were called by their deadname. That approach feels like a better modeling of not calling trans people by their deadnames—although Jägerfeld does make it abundantly clear that Marcus has completely rejected that name.
Nevertheless, some might find resonance in this slice-of-life book about a trans boy who is confident in who he is and has the strength to navigate the (unfortunately realistic) ups and downs of dealing with family and friends who don’t quite understand him (yet).
Content warnings: Mention of the death by suicide of a (real-life) trans girl, Leelah Alcorn, and of some unnamed teens on YouTube who “said they couldn’t take it anymore.” Marcus also mentions an incident when a girl in his class tries to pull down his underwear to see his genitals.
Translated from Swedish by B. J. Woodstein.
