81. The Pants Project by Cat Clark

listened on Audible

2017
272 pgs.
MidGr CRF
Finished  7/28/2021
Goodreads rating: 4.09 - 2106 ratings
My rating: 4.5

My comments: Another story about a trans middle schooler.  Live is starting a brand new middle school where she has to wear a uniform and for girlss that means a skirt every day.  She hates this.  nd of course there are two (female) bully sidekicks that treat her horribly, especially when they discover she has two moms.  Her best friend abandons her completely to be popular, but she meets a terrific young man, Jacob, who becomes her best friend.  Her mom and mama are terrific, as is her little brother Enzo.  It's a great story of a loving family in contemporary times and a young person who begins to trust herselfand the choices she makes.  

Goodreads synopsis:  Whoever wrote the uniform policy decided (whyyy?) that girls had to wear skirts, while boys were allowed to wear pants.

Sexist. Dumb. Unfair.

“Girls must wear a black, pleated, knee-length skirt.”

I bet I read those words a hundred times during summer vacation. The problem wasn’t the last word in that sentence. Skirt wasn’t really the issue, not for me.
The issue was the first word. Girls.

Here’s the thing:
I may seem like a girl, but on the inside, I’m a boy.

78. Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff

Book borrowed from CCLS

2021, Dial Book for Young Readers
188 pgs.
Mid Gr CRF
Finished 7/24/2021
Goodreads rating: 4.30 - 371 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: contemporary rural Vermont

First line/s: "It's strange living in our old house now that Uncle Roderick is dead."

My comments: It's very difficult to review this book without spoilers, but I feel it's very important to read it without knowing exactly what is going to happen.  It's written beautifully. From the beginning I knew I wouldn't be able to put it into my new school's library, being a Catholic School and all the problems that Catholics seem to have with anything LGBTQ.  I need this job, so I won't fight that externally, only internally.  And now, spoilers are coming, so if you have not read this book and even have the tiniest notion you might, do not read further.  Bug, the protagonist, goes through an incredible transformation of identity in the summer s/he turns 13 and is getting ready for middle school.  Bug has been born with female "parts," and has been raised as a girl.  He discovers the reason that he never really sees himself when he looks in the mirror, just a copy of himself.  He discovers so much more than that as well...that he is transgender and immediately begins referring to himself as HE instead of she.  Everyone in his life is so understanding, no one bullies him or makes him feel in any way awkward or uncomfortable, neither kids he's grown up with or administrators in the new-to-him middle school.  How I would like to very much believe this would be the reality for kids like him!  In one of the reviews I read about this book, Betsy Bird says that she thinks that some kids are just getting tired of books and movies full of bullying and meanness (my words/translation).  I sure hope she's right!  The afterword by the author is very enlightening, I'm guessing this story - or a big part of it - is autobiographical.  

Goodreads synopsis:  A haunting ghost story about navigating grief, growing up, and growing into a new gender identity

          It's the summer before middle school and eleven-year-old Bug's best friend Moira has decided the two of them need to use the next few months to prepare. For Moira, this means figuring out the right clothes to wear, learning how to put on makeup, and deciding which boys are cuter in their yearbook photos than in real life. But none of this is all that appealing to Bug, who doesn't particularly want to spend more time trying to understand how to be a girl. Besides, there's something more important to worry about: A ghost is haunting Bug's eerie old house in rural Vermont...and maybe haunting Bug in particular. As Bug begins to untangle the mystery of who this ghost is and what they're trying to say, an altogether different truth comes to light--Bug is transgender.

MOVIE - Eighth Grade

R (1:34)

Wide release 8/3/18

Viewed 8/6/18
IMBd: 7.5

RT Critic:  99  Audience:  83
Critic's Consensus:  Eighth Grade takes a look at its titular time period that offers a rare and resounding ring of truth while heralding breakthroughs for writer-director Bo Burnham and captivating star Elsie Fisher.

Cag:  2/Bleh...it was okay, I guess

Directed by Bo Burnham, who also wrote it

Studio A24

My comments:  This movie was painful.  Difficult to believe.  Even weird kids have friends (most of the time), and Kayla isn't weird.  She's average.  Nothing-special looks, almost cute other than she doesn't stand up straight.  Probably an average student.  Thoughtful.  She seems to lack self-confidence, but that again is "average."  But she would have friends, of this I am certain. (I was a teacher in three different K-8 schools, for some of the years actually teaching 8th grade). This movie depicts her a being totally friendless.  No way.  Probably one of the biggest themes in the movie is the social networking that's happening in kids' lives now.

RT/ IMDb Summary  Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school--the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year before she begins high school.

35. Posted by John David Anderson

Read on my iPhone
2017, Walden Pond Press
384 pgs.
Middle Grades CRF
Finished 6-27-17
Goodreads rating:  4.34 - 254 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting:  Contemporary small town Michigan

First line/s:  "I push my way through the buzzing mob and freeze, heart - struck, dizzy."

My comments: This book looks bullying right in the eye and takes it on.  It doesn't give answers.  The writing is beautifully crafted, taking a few major themes and weaving them around and together, the unifying link being  friendship, where it comes from and where it goes.  Quite a book.

Goodreads synopsis:  From John David Anderson, author of the acclaimed Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, comes a humorous, poignant, and original contemporary story about bullying, broken friendships, and the failures of communication between kids.

In middle school, words aren’t just words. They can be weapons. They can be gifts. The right words can win you friends or make you enemies. They can come back to haunt you. Sometimes they can change things forever.          

     When cell phones are banned at Branton Middle School, Frost and his friends Deedee, Wolf, and Bench come up with a new way to communicate: leaving sticky notes for each other all around the school. It catches on, and soon all the kids in school are leaving notes—though for every kind and friendly one, there is a cutting and cruel one as well.

     In the middle of this, a new girl named Rose arrives at school and sits at Frost’s lunch table. Rose is not like anyone else at Branton Middle School, and it’s clear that the close circle of friends Frost has made for himself won’t easily hold another. As the sticky-note war escalates, and the pressure to choose sides mounts, Frost soon realizes that after this year, nothing will ever be the same.