Susan the Librarian

The publisher’s summary

In this modern take on Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, debut writer Jess Callans delivers a tender, queer coming of age story about finding your voice and choosing to live authentically, even when it’s easier to blend in.

Puberty, AKA the ultimate biological predator, is driving a wedge between soon-to-be 13 year old Ollie Thompson and their lifelong friends. Too much of a girl for their neighborhood hockey team, but not girly enough for their boy-crazed BFF, Ollie doesn’t know where they fit. And their usual ability to camouflage? Woefully disrupted by all the changes around them.

When a school project asks them to write an essay on what it means to be a woman (if anyone’s got an answer, that’d be great), and one of their new friends is the target of bullying, Ollie is caught between the safety of fleeing from their own differences or confronting the risks of fighting to take their own path forward.

My recommendation

This book gave me flashbacks to middle school. The descriptions of peer interactions were so raw and real that they hit me viscerally, making me ache alongside Ollie, who is cued neurodivergent but without a label or support structure, as I was at their age. Readers who like Ollie are questioning their gender identity will find solidarity and authenticity in this story, and readers who do not share Ollie’s nonbinary identity will also find solidarity and authenticity in the many other middle school “in betweens” explored in the novel: being in between a kid and a grown up, in between a bully and a hero, in between a friend and an enemy. I highly recommend this beautiful debut to middle school students.