Her brother comments that she must be in there with a dirty magazine. Melissa hides in the bathroom with magazines meant for preteen girls. This isn’t really sexual content in a romantic sense, but I wanted to specify some notes for clarity. She’s certain about her identity, but the news comes as a shock to some around her. Melissa is a fourth grade student who struggles to tell her family that she is a transgender girl. To have a trusted adult look into your face and say, in effect, “I see you, and it’s okay.” Wow. That message and that gentle support is something we all need as we wrestle with hard things. Honestly? I cried when the principal told Melissa that her door was always open. The character relationships felt very organic and really moved me. The way Melissa’s connection to Charlotte became such a powerful motivator was really cool. I loved the writing in this book and the way the author used CHARLOTTE’S WEB in the novel. What does it look like to be a supportive friend? What does it look like to be a supportive teacher or administrator? A supportive parent? How do we treat someone who is transgender? MELISSA invites readers into the discussion about how to talk to or about someone who is transgender. One of the great things about this story is that it allows us to open a dialogue with our kids. To remember the courage it takes to own who we are, and to speak up when someone else has it wrong, especially when it’s the people we love most. To withhold judgment and hear what someone we love is saying to us. To stand in a young transgender girl’s shoes for a bit. A story like this gives an opportunity to see what life looks like from inside this experience. They deserve the model of a supportive parent who doesn’t have all the answers, but loves her child no matter what, and is determined to be on her side, even if the journey is different than she might have expected.Īnother reason is that many people, myself included, don’t know what this experience is like for someone. First, obviously, young readers sharing the experience that the main character in this book has deserve to see themselves on the page as the hero of a story.
It’s about her right to her identity and to be known as she truly is.Ī story like this is important for a lot of reasons. I think I expected or wanted to see more of what her process looked like for arriving at that realization, but this story isn’t really about how she got there. She’d already processed and concluded: the problem was she was a girl everyone saw as a boy. She wasn’t gathering and analyzing her feelings to try to figure out what they were or what they meant. One of the things that struck me about this book was how, from the very first moment of the story, Melissa’s identity wasn’t a question.
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