Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
Gabe is in the latter stages of embracing himself as a transgender man after coming to the realization that he's Gabe and not the Liz his family and schoolmates thought him to be. Gabe discovers an outlet for his love of music when his next door neighbor arranges a radio show for him on the local community radio station, an outlet that gives him the strength to be more public but also challenges him to believe in himself when a radio caller turns into a bully.
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out
Also available for download as an e-book.
Absorbing and illuminating profiles of six transgender young adults, edited by the author with such care and restraint that her subjects' individual voices shine as they tell their own personal stories.
Freakboy
A story of three characters told in accessible, engaging verse. Main character Brendan, a 17 year old wrester, struggles to define who and what he is in a family and culture with its own subtle (and not so subtle) homophobic and gender stereotypes. He shares the story with his girlfriend Vanessa, also a wrestler who defies and bumps up against gender stereotypes and a new stranger in Brendan's life, transgender Angel, who works at the local LGBTQ Center and provides a different, illuminating kind of friendship.
Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Other Identities
Also available for download as an e-book.
A collection of essays and poetry by LGBTQ teens and young adults from a variety of backgrounds as they share their journeys of self-discovery and acceptance of themselves for who they are. Authors of chapters of note to readers interested in transgender experiences: Rasmussen, Forest, Duggan, Iris, Davis.
Gracefully Grayson
Grayson Sender struggles with being true to himself, and to acknowledge in public what he knows to be true – “he” is a girl on the inside, stuck in the wrong gender’s body.
I am J
Also available for download as an e-book.
17 year old New Yorker, J, has always known he was a boy despite being born into the body of a girl, but getting his parents and best friend to see him for who he truly is has been a struggle. When he can no longer straddle two genders, his struggle leads him to the streets of Manhattan looking for not only the hormones that will help him to realize who he is but also the acceptance of those he loves and, most of all, of himself.
If I Was Your Girl
Amanda Hardy is a transgender young woman transferring to a new school. Determined to keep everyone at a distance until graduation, Amanda is surprised when she makes friends and falls in love for the first time. A thoughtful, moving look at love, and understanding who you really are.
Melissa (formerly published as George)
Fourth grader Melissa knows she is a girl. When she wants to try out for the role of Charlotte in the school's production of Charlotte's Web, her teacher won't allow it because she sees Melissa as a boy. It's only with the help of Melissa’s best friend, Kelly, that she's able to pull it off and, in the process, communicate to the important people in her life who she really is. Grades 4 & up.
Parrotfish
Rethinking Normal
Also available for download as an e-book.
Oklahoman Hill recounts her childhood and her struggle to articulate who she was from an early age, the subsequent bullying she experienced as a trans teen, and into her early adulthood living as a transgender young adult while attending college and embracing her role as a public advocate within the LGBT community.
Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen
Also available for download as an e-book.
Oklahoma teen Arin Andrews recounts his childhood and adolescence, struggling to identify and articulate his gender dysphoria, coming out to his mother and family and falling in love as he realizes his true self.
Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers
Well researched and engrossing narrative non-fiction begins with the author, who volunteers at an alternative high school for LGBT homeless youth, and the relationships she forms with her transgender female students. Beam expertly weaves the narratives of her subjects with the larger journalistic work of positing their lives within the framework of poverty, homelessness, transgender phobia, barriers to education and medicine as well as society's relationship to transgender people.
Wandering Son
Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy.
When the Moon Was Ours
Also available as an e-book.
Miel is as strange and confounding as the day she spilled out of the water tower and arrived in town. With roses that burst out of her wrists, she's more than a stranger to everyone but Sam, the one boy brave enough to greet her from the water tower and take her into his life. Their intimate bond, years in the making, is tested when the town's Bonner Sisters lose their ability to seduce all the boys in town and turn to Miel's captivating roses to retain their power.
The Witch Boy
In thirteen-year-old Aster's family, all the girls are raised to be witches, while boys grow up to be shapeshifters, no exceptions. Unfortunately for Aster, he still hasn't shifted...and he's still fascinated by witchery, no matter how forbidden it might be...