I just read Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger (304 pages) and Luna by Julie Anne Peters (248 pages). While I’ve read tons of queer literature, I don’t really know about novels about trans people, but here were two Transgender Teen Novels and I obvs love YA lit so here we go. If anyone has any more recommendations, by the way, that would be awesome. I almost didn’t want to read Luna because it seemed so depressing – I was worried that it couldn’t be headed anywhere good. But I did actually enjoy it. It’s from the point of the view of Luna’s sister – Luna is a transwoman – and Luna is very closeted, acting like a boy at school and at home and only putting on women’s clothing and makeup at night in her sister’s room. This story shows the emotional/mental toll this takes than Parrotfish does – Parrotfish is overall a much more upbeat story, I think. (Maybe this is a Wittlinger thing – Love & Lies was also sort of naively upbeat as is commonplace in YA lit.) In Parrotfish, the protagonist, Grady, begins (as the novel does) living as a boy and dealing with what that entails at high school and at home. His nerdy friend and the girl he has a crush on make it a fun read despite the bullying that goes on.
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