Book Review: George by Alex Gino
George by Alex Gino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Why I Read This Book: In my search for LGBTQ+-positive fiction, I happened upon this middle-grade contemporary about a trans girl who desperately wants to be Charlotte in their school’s stage production of Charlotte’s Web, but can’t because everyone sees her as a boy and her teacher is a fierce believer in the gender binary.
Types of representation presented in this book: LGBTQ+ (double bonus: the main character is trans, and the author is nonbinary genderqueer!)
I would recommend this book for: Kids ages eight and up, and going all the way up to adults who want a diverse, cute read! Bonus points for nostalgia (regarding Charlotte’s Web) and the main plot being about the kids putting on a stage play (the theater nerd in me died of happiness!) Especially for teachers who are looking for a book to spark discussion in their classroom about LGBTQ+ issues and open doors for LGBTQ+ students to be able to find support without putting themselves at risk for bullying.
When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she’s not a boy. She knows she’s a girl.
Note: Though the title of this book is “George” and most of the time she is known by her deadname George, I will be referring to her as Melissa, her new name, because whenever you know a trans person and they have a new name to fit with their identity, you should always call them by the name that matches who they are rather than their deadname.
My favorite things about this book:
[image error]
The premise of “kids putting on a stage play” did not disappoint at all. A good portion of the book is about the kids in Melissa’s class putting on the play of Charlotte’s Web, either the preparations leading up to the play or the opening night itself. As someone who used to be very involved in her school’s theater department and loved performing onstage, I got all the nostalgia from remembering my own days onstage, along with the nostalgia that Gino manages to entice out of the reader from the focus on Charlotte’s Web.
[image error]
In this book, Melissa’s primary relationship, aside from her mother and brother, is with her best friend, Kelly. And Kelly and Melissa just have THE cutest friendship ever! For example, Kelly understands Melissa’s fervent desire to be Charlotte, and when Melissa reveals to Kelly that she’s really a girl, Kelly’s like “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that term, transgender. Thanks for telling me what it means to you” and then CALLS MELISSA BY HER NEW NAME AND HUGS HER AND JUST ACCEPTS HER IMMEDIATELY!! So cute! I got ALL THE FEELZ!!
[image error]
It’s very easy to empathize with Melissa, and within the first few pages, you develop a connection to her and start rooting for her to succeed: you start rooting for her to get the role of Charlotte, you root for her to have the courage to dress in skirts and wear makeup, a secret desire that she keeps hidden from her family, and you root for her to find acceptance from the adults around her and to see her for what she really is, instead of how she was born.
Some things I didn’t really like about this story
[image error]
At one point, pretty early on in the story, the recess monitor orders Kelly and Melissa “off the ground” because an animal might have urinated there, which didn’t make much sense at all to me. It might have been just a problem with logistics, because I was imagining that the girls were sitting under a tree on a patch of grass at the edge of the school yard, so it didn’t make sense for her to tell them off the ground because ostensibly there wouldn’t be any animals to urinate on it–the tree would protect their spot from birds, and they would still be far enough away from the fence that dogs and other animals wouldn’t reach that far inside. And because of this confusion, I didn’t understand the point of the recess monitor yelling at them, only for them to go somewhere else where the recess monitor wouldn’t yell at them and continue the conversation.
[image error]
I admit, I was a little disappointed by the ending–Ms. Udell, who was the main antagonist of this story (even more so than Melissa’s mother or brother), never got her comeuppance. She never apologized to Melissa, or changed her ways (as far as we can see). Melissa even goes as far as to read Charlotte’s lines for the audition to prove that she’s the best fit for the part, and Ms. Udell is like “no, you’re a boy, so you can’t be Charlotte.”
Um, this is 2020, and we have moved past “a person’s genitals should define what they can do in life.” Because we don’t get to see Ms. Udell regret how she treated Melissa, we don’t really get to see further into Ms. Udell’s motivations to her beliefs. Is it a religious thing? Is she from a very traditional family? Because I’m the kind of person who doesn’t understand why our appearances, the sex we were assigned at birth, our natural disabilities, should define how other people treat us, so I don’t particularly appreciate books that have a character who is anti-LGBTQ without a good reason. Nor do I appreciate said anti-LGBTQ+ character not either seeing that they were wrong (because they are) or at least getting some sort of comeuppance, or the main character and/or the LGBTQ+ characters impeded by their views being free of their influence by the end of the story. As far as we know, Melissa is still in Ms. Udell’s class, and as far as we know, Ms. Udell still sees Melissa as “George,” with no indication that she will accept Melissa if she were to reveal to Ms. Udell that she was trans, nor will Ms. Udell learn, through Melissa’s presence, how to treat any LGBTQ+ students she may get in the future.
In conclusion: A fun, unique book that is in that rare category of “everyone should read this” (usually I don’t like labeling books as such, but in this case, I feel like this book has such a wide appeal, along with a potential to spark debate, change people’s minds, and encourage LGBTQ+ inclusivity in spaces where otherwise there wouldn’t be much opportunity to do so).
