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Author of Novel Featuring Transgender Tween Visits Ferndale Library

FERNDALE – Author of a new novel focusing on the experiences of a trans youth, titled "George," will be featured at the Ferndale Library May 17 to talk about their book, offer a book signing and provide a meet-and-greet for fans beginning at 6:30 p.m.
"Be Who You Are," begins the book description for "George." The 2015 novel follows a fourth grade transgender girl who is known to almost everyone as George — her birth name. When people look at George, they think they see a boy. But she knows she's not a boy; she knows she's a girl.
While the book follows George, author Alex Gino — who identifies as gender queer and prefers the pronouns they/them — specifically used female pronouns to identify the protagonist on each page. Just as George thinks she'll have to keep this secret forever, a window of opportunity opens when "Charlotte's Web" is announced as the year's class play. When George wants to play Charlotte, the teacher denies her an audition because she's a boy. The book becomes about much more than George's plan to win the part: it chronicles how everyone can know, once and for all, who she is.
"Well, we're both trans, white, bad at sports and grew up in New York. (I grew up in Staten Island; she lives an hour north of the city)," Gino says of the character. "We both want to be seen for who we are, and we both love Mario Kart! In other ways, we're not all that similar. I knew I was different as a kid, but I could never have named my gender as clearly as Melissa knows for herself. Part of that is about the fact that I'm genderqueer. Another part is that Melissa was born into a different culture than I was, one in which she's able to find the word transgender and what it means outside of an afternoon talk show brawl," Gino said in a September 2015 interview with the Guardian.
Gino has been an active proponent of providing more space in children's literature for transgender voices to be heard, telling specifically transgender stories.
In 2016 Gino won the American Library Association's 2016 Stonewall Book Award, and they are an active member of the online campain We Need Diverse Books: http://weneeddiversebooks.org/
The Ferndale Library is located at 222 W. Nine Mile Road, Ferndale.

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