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by Ellen Wittlinger
Finally, a funny, NOT tragic Female-to-Male transgender teen book!
I heard Ellen read the first chapter of this aloud at the recent SCBWI Summer Conference, and it really got me. Funny and deep and wonderful.
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3 comments:
This is my favorite book, it's the book of my life, pretty much to a T, minus the fact that my family is Jewish. Grady is a very brave teenager, I love how the book is realistic and not a fake happy utopian world where everyone is accepting. It's the perfect amounts of funny and serious.
-m
I very much enjoyed reading parrotfish, and find that it's perfunctory on the "I'm trans, now what do I read" list. I like how it handles the complex questions of gender, friendship, and attraction in a way that is positive and realistic. It is the kind of book that will hopefully cause people to consider things they hadn't before.
However, it feels like there is something missing... like the author has created this frame of what it means to be transgender, and left out the core. While I commend the fact that this book doesn't get itself stuck on making life as hard as possible, I do think that the adversity could have been handled more realistically. The hardest parts of coming out as trans tend to be parents and your self, and both of these issues are skated over in the novel. It feels like when Grady gets to the ending, he hasn't had to travel very far to get there. The book doesn't do anything wrong, it just leaves out what it could have done right.
I think that this is a good book with a great message, and would recommend it to anyone interested in reading about a trans character, and anyone who is transgender themselves, even though to the latter it might seem slightly hollow.
I read this book in one day, because I couldn't put it down! It was both funny, and occasionally thought provoking. Definitely a good read.
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