Great transgender reads for 2019!

Here are two excellent new young adult novels with transgender characters.  

Birthday by Meredith Russo.  

Birthdays!  They're a time to feel celebrated and loved, especially if you share your birthday day with one of your besties from childhood.  And that's the way it is for Morgan and Eric.  

Here are two kids who have been a part of each other’s childhoods ever since their parents gave birth to them on the same day and at the same hospital during a freak September blizzard.  Their friendship gets even more solid during years of learning to play football together and also through family tragedies like the death of Morgan’s mom. 

On the birthday day right before they start middle school, Morgan considers letting Eric know a deeply held secret.  Morgan is questioning his gender.  

The reader gets to check in with during their next birthdays, which is a great way to allow time to move quickly.  We will get to see Morgan and Eric all the way through high school and beyond. Their years are filled with major changes that test their friendship.  But they always seem to find a way to spend at least a part of their birthday day together.  

I read this in one evening because Morgan’s story is so compelling. Morgan’s father and community make it very difficult to live her truth. There is one chapter closer to the end that is particularly heartbreaking as Morgan attempts to live up to community and family expectations.  

This is Meredith Russo's next novel after her excellent If I Was Your Girl.  

And She Was by Jessica Verdi 

Dara's life after high school plan is to play professional tennis and she has the skill and the coaching to achieve this goal.  What she doesn't have is a mother who believes in her life path and the money to support her while she does this. 

She also does not have a passport to get her to the Canadian tournament that she needs to start getting noticed for her abilities.  So she asks her mom for her birth certificate.  Her mom insists that it has been lost and refuses to talk about it any further. 

So Dara does what any thwarted 18-year-old would do.  She tears the house apart, eventually finding the lock box under her mom's bed, the key to the lock box, and--finally-the certificate. 

Which does not have her actual name on it.  More intriguingly, it also doesn't have the right parent names either. 

Dara spends a few hours thinking that she was abducted at birth before her mom comes home.  When confronted, she tells the truth.  Her mom is actually her biological father.  She transitioned after Dara was born.  

Dara is rocked to the core by this news.  When she learns that she also has a set of grandparents that she has never known, she decides that she is going on a road trip to find them.  She takes along her childhood best friend and neighbor. 

At some point in time, her mom starts to send her emails explaining the whole story from the very beginning.  These two story lines start to link up as Dara finds her lost family and starts to realize what they may be able to do for her. 

Dara's identity struggles and anger towards her mother is honest and riveting.