Jazz’s positivity, honesty, frank explanations, and conversational writing style make this an ideal book for trans kids to...
Before she was in preschool, Jazz knew she wasn’t a boy, and she didn’t understand why no one else did. Her parents took her to meet with a well-versed therapist, who told them Jazz is transgender, and they started on a journey with no map.
Obstinate school faculty and officials soon made it clear that there was no protocol for someone like Jazz, and the family’s necessary activism began in earnest, by way of an article in the local paper. That article got the attention of producers of a national TV show, who pursued Jazz’s family until they agreed to take a leap of faith and do an interview. Jazz’s mother became involved in public speaking at conferences, and she and Jazz began their outreach and advocacy work, even starting their own organization and agreeing to do a reality show. As Jennings relates, through it all, she manages to keep it apart from her typical teenage life, replete with summer-camp experiences, cute-but-jerky boys, best friends, and ex–best friends and marked with a passion for art and mermaids. Her outlook is bright, even as she struggles with depression—hereditary and unrelated to being trans. Jazz is fearlessly up front with people about being trans, and her gender meter is pinned on GIRL, but she also touches on gender variations and carefully stresses that not all trans people are like her.
Jazz’s positivity, honesty, frank explanations, and conversational writing style make this an ideal book for trans kids to hand to worried loved ones after they’ve finished reading it. (Nonfiction. 12 & up)Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-55464-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A well-meaning but uneven collection.
Thirty-five essays encourage young readers to break the rules.
“Be tougher, be thinner, be smarter, be sexier, be funnier, be quieter, be louder, be better dressed, be more aware of what’s cool, be better at: everything.” Young people growing up awash in electronic media and the images and lifestyles they sell are often easy victims, never realizing the extent to which they are being brainwashed. Add to that, their fellow students are conforming to the same societal expectations and preying on those who are too different. Young people are in danger, as recent suicide statistics suggest. In this collection, 35 writers encourage readers to stop obeying the voices telling them how to think, dress, act and believe. In “Don’t Get Fat,” Lisa Burstein writes about leaving behind the “warped, sick, eating-disordered” frame of mind fed by a voice that is “the mayor of crazy-town.” In “Be Clean!” Gary D. Schmidt tells of rejecting the mind control of a youth pastor trying to save his soul. The best writers here couch their lessons in stories, but others lecture, and some sound like inspirational graduation speeches. After a whole volume of such essays, the mantra “Break These Rules” itself begins to sound like a rule to question.
A well-meaning but uneven collection. (about the contributors) (Essays. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61374-784-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Despite its split personality, her story is easy to relate to and recommended for fans of Raina Telgemeier and Laura Lee...
An autobiographical graphic pastiche recounts the author’s experience of leaving her rural hometown and going to art school in a new city.
Ramsey spent her first 18 years in the quiet town of Paw Paw, Mich., but she knew that she wanted to leave her comfort zone. After applying to a number of art schools—which she chose based on location and relative vibrancy of their punk scenes—she selects an art institute in Baltimore. She makes friends easily and shares her experiences of freshman year: being silly, pulling all-nighters and hanging out. As the semester wanes, the group’s dynamics shift, and Ramsey finds herself about to start her summer with a new boyfriend, Daniel. Ramsey’s an obsessive list-keeper, and her recollections are liberally peppered with catalogs of things she thinks about, memories drawn as comics and snippets from her journal. Being in her head is an intensely personal experience, but readers may feel oddly disconnected from her social life and her interplay with her peers. One of her professors tells her that she has “such a wall around [herself]”; this seems especially true in many places throughout her memoir.
Despite its split personality, her story is easy to relate to and recommended for fans of Raina Telgemeier and Laura Lee Gulledge. (Graphic memoir. 13 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-936976-18-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Zest Books
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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