One of my favorite, thought-provoking questions came from a class who had been warned not to ask a question they had read in any interviews they did as prep for my visit (shout out to the All-Star Sarahs who teach 5th grade at Queen Anne in Seattle.) A student asked me what scene I most hated to write. And, of course, kids have better questions than adults do, for the most part. The questions! When I visit schools and libraries, I go right to questions because that’s where I get a pulse on the room. What’s your favorite part of visiting classrooms? They don’t (yet) have the hang ups adults do about how things are supposed to be, and if they meet kids like Melissa in the books they read, maybe they never will. They’re inspired by the characters in the book who ally with Melissa and tell me they want to be like them. They tell me that they feel like Melissa sometimes – not necessarily as trans (though that sometimes too), but as different, as misunderstood, as too sensitive, as unseen. And while I’m glad they’re learning, the issue isn’t really about understanding transgender and gender nonconforming people, so much as it’s about respecting us and trusting us as experts on ourselves. What stands out for me is the way students connect with Melissa (the main character of my book, who most people know as George.) Often, adults tell me that they feel they understand transgender people better after reading my book. When you do an author visit with students, what stands out for you about their reaction to reading the novel? Now that I’m back to reading kids’ books, I’m fine. It turns out that I just find grown-up fiction long and boring. In fact, for a long time, I thought I had lost my love of reading. And I’ve always loved children’s literature. It’s written in the close third-person, with a linear narrative structure, a best friend and a bully, and a school play. In a lot of ways, George is a very traditional story, and in that way, it feels familiar, even if the reader hasn’t ever thought about trans issues before. It’s a book that I hope people connect with. Like a lot of marginalized writers, I wrote the book I wish I had read. And I think about who I would be now if I had experienced positive representations of transness in the world as a kid. When I was figuring out who I was in college, books were an invaluable resource for me. You can learn more about Alex and their novel, George, here. Last year, Alex was a participating author in the LGBTQ Writers in Schools program and is returning again this year as our kick-off author. I recently asked Alex Gino a few questions about their middle-grade transgender novel, George (Scholastic).
Alex Gino on Writing Trans Middle-Grade Fiction
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