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anna_wa's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Okay, this book was too good. I wanted to cry like, 100 times (sadness and happiness equally) but still managed to slam through it in 3 days.
I have been trying my best to do one last minute power-through of as many books actually released in 2022 as I could before 2022 ends, and when I saw Kyle Lukoff wrote this one, I was instantly curious because I had read and adored his picture book When Aidan Became A Brother. As soon as I read the description I was hooked and knew I had to check it out from the library immediately before they closed for the holiday.
At the very beginning of the book, I thought this was going to be a story of Annabelle as a queer child stuck in a homophobic family in a small town, because of the way her dad reacts to a poster for a pre-Pride drag brunch when she and him are visiting Seattle and because of the way her mother seems uncomfortable when she brings up her new friend Bailey and uses the right pronouns for them. I was preparing to be very angry at everyone who isn't Annabelle and Bailey and root for them to escape their small homophobic+transphobic town into a better life - just like a lot of the lesbian books I remembered reading in the 2000s and early 2010s when I was figuring out who I was.
However, that is not the story that I got at all.
And I apologize, spoilers are going to start now because there is no way I can talk about this book without spoiling the initial biggest plot twist.
A few days after Annabelle brings Bailey over to her house and there's a big showdown where her dad is extremely disrespectful and nonbinary-phobic, Annabelle's dad drives her to a location where nobody else will overhear the two of them and he tells her, for the very first time in her life, that he is a trans man and he is the one who was pregnant with her, not her mother.
Suddenly everything Annabelle has understood about herself and how she came to be is flown into a loop and she falls down a rabbithole of a zillion questions. But the most important question at that moment is: "Then why were you so mean to Bailey?"
The answer to that is very long (and more than a little nonbinary-phobic) but part of it is that he was betrayed by his own trans community when he got pregnant and he "learned" that it was better to just pretend not to be trans at all and to move somewhere where nobody else knew about who he used to be.
Yeah, so you can see why I cried a lot. But Annabelle and Bailey keep hanging out, and Bailey keeps bringing in their new city-kid ideas with them, and slowly Annabelle's dad starts to break out of his shell more and more and slowly, but surely, he starts to heal from his past and embrace the present and future.
There are sooo many important conversations in this book - conversations between older generations of queer people and younger generations of queer kids, conversations about school discrimination and how all it takes sometimes is one kid and one parent to set it in motion (and also about how sometimes all it takes is kids and parents to change it), and even conversations about climate change too.
I highly recommend this to parents, educators, and EVERYONE to be quite honest. Kyle Lukoff is amazing whether it is picture books or written books. <3
I have been trying my best to do one last minute power-through of as many books actually released in 2022 as I could before 2022 ends, and when I saw Kyle Lukoff wrote this one, I was instantly curious because I had read and adored his picture book When Aidan Became A Brother. As soon as I read the description I was hooked and knew I had to check it out from the library immediately before they closed for the holiday.
At the very beginning of the book, I thought this was going to be a story of Annabelle as a queer child stuck in a homophobic family in a small town, because of the way her dad reacts to a poster for a pre-Pride drag brunch when she and him are visiting Seattle and because of the way her mother seems uncomfortable when she brings up her new friend Bailey and uses the right pronouns for them. I was preparing to be very angry at everyone who isn't Annabelle and Bailey and root for them to escape their small homophobic+transphobic town into a better life - just like a lot of the lesbian books I remembered reading in the 2000s and early 2010s when I was figuring out who I was.
However, that is not the story that I got at all.
And I apologize, spoilers are going to start now because there is no way I can talk about this book without spoiling the initial biggest plot twist.
A few days after Annabelle brings Bailey over to her house and there's a big showdown where her dad is extremely disrespectful and nonbinary-phobic, Annabelle's dad drives her to a location where nobody else will overhear the two of them and he tells her, for the very first time in her life, that he is a trans man and he is the one who was pregnant with her, not her mother.
Suddenly everything Annabelle has understood about herself and how she came to be is flown into a loop and she falls down a rabbithole of a zillion questions. But the most important question at that moment is: "Then why were you so mean to Bailey?"
The answer to that is very long (and more than a little nonbinary-phobic) but part of it is that he was betrayed by his own trans community when he got pregnant and he "learned" that it was better to just pretend not to be trans at all and to move somewhere where nobody else knew about who he used to be.
Yeah, so you can see why I cried a lot. But Annabelle and Bailey keep hanging out, and Bailey keeps bringing in their new city-kid ideas with them, and slowly Annabelle's dad starts to break out of his shell more and more and slowly, but surely, he starts to heal from his past and embrace the present and future.
There are sooo many important conversations in this book - conversations between older generations of queer people and younger generations of queer kids, conversations about school discrimination and how all it takes sometimes is one kid and one parent to set it in motion (and also about how sometimes all it takes is kids and parents to change it), and even conversations about climate change too.
I highly recommend this to parents, educators, and EVERYONE to be quite honest. Kyle Lukoff is amazing whether it is picture books or written books. <3
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma and Transphobia
Moderate: Pregnancy and Homophobia
imstephtacular's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Dysphoria, Transphobia, and Homophobia
Moderate: Medical content, Gaslighting, Bullying, Grief, Lesbophobia, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
Minor: Ableism, Sexism, and Racism
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