George is a book about a young closeted transgender MTF, written by Alex Gino, a genderqueer man who goes by they/them pronouns. George is in the 5th grade and the book is geared towards readers in that age range. George is one of the highlighted books in the We Need Diverse Books campaign which aims to get diverse children’s books prioritized in publishing. The book is written in third person with George referred to by she/her throughout, which is what I’ve stuck to in my review.

I knew going in that I probably wouldn’t agree with the politics of the book, but wow is there a lot to unpack.

Our introduction to George is a scene of her secretly reading girl magazines:

As she tipped the denim bag on its side, the silky, slippery pages of a dozen magazines fell out onto the tiled bathroom floor. Covers promised HOW TO HAVE PERFECT SKIN, TWELVE FRESH SUMMER HAIRCUTS, HOW TO TELL A HOTTIE YOU LIKE HIM and WILD WINTER WARDROBES. George was only a few years younger than the girls smiling at her from the glossy pages. She thought of them as her friends.

George then admires a picture of some girls in swimsuits, imagines herself as one of them, giggling and wearing a pink swimsuit with long hair that her new friends would braid.

George settled on a two-page spread about FRAMING YOUR FACE WITH MAKEUP. George had never worn makeup, but she pored over the range of colors on the left side of the page. Her heart raced in her chest. She wondered what it would feel like to really wear lipstick. George loved to put on Chapstick. She used it all winter, whether or not her lips were really chapped, and every spring she hid the tube from Mom and wore it until it ran out.

Because boys don’t wear chapstick? O.K.

Then George’s brother comes in and talks to her about dude things, like killer zombie movies and jerking off. Boys! Just wholesome piles of stereotypes!

George thinks about how much she’d like to kiss a boy. Not something I really thought about at the age of ten, honestly. But maybe I was just a late bloomer.

We go with George to school where she gets made fun of in class for crying at the ending of Charlotte’s Web (is this supposed to show innate girlness as well? unclear) and then gets upset at having to carry the BOYS bathroom pass down the hall.

I too got made fun of for crying at school. As an adult, I still cry when I’m upset. It’s a basic human response, and we shouldn’t let kids think it’s a sign of weakness or lack of self-control.

George hates the boy’s bathroom:

It was the worst room in the school. She hated the smell of pee and bleach, and she hated the blue tiles on the wall to remind you where you were, as if the urinals didn’t make it obvious enough. The whole room was about being a boy, and when boys were in there, they liked to talk about what was between their legs.

Hmmm, that does sound terrible! Do boys really talk about their dicks that much? I’ll tell you that I hated using the bathrooms at school too, but never did I ever hear girls talk about “what was between their legs.” In fact, it was mortifying to have your period and know other girls could hear the wrapper of your pad ripping open, and sometimes I’d wait until someone flushed to try and cover the sound. #justgirlythings, you know, being ashamed of your own anatomy.



George’s class is going to perform Charlotte’s Web as a play, and George’s secret tormented dream is to play the lead role, Charlotte, even though it’s a girl’s role. Nevermind that roles for speaking roles for men vastly outnumber roles for women in all media and fiction, and that it’s rare for women to have the chance to play the lead role in anything. We’re going to have an important lesson about how George deserves this role, because special girl-feelings.

We learn that George’s mom prefers jeans to skirts and doesn’t wear makeup. George takes a bath and “tried not to think about what was between her legs but there it was, bobbing in front of her”. Okay I did not know that dicks “bobbed” in water and that’s a visual I did not need. And this is a book for elementary students? George wraps a towel around herself “the way girls do.”

George has seen a trans woman on TV and knows that “a boy can become a girl” and you can get surgeries if you have the money, and that “you can start before you’re eighteen with pills called androgen blockers that stopped the boy hormones inside you from turning your body into a man’s.”

George continues to be extremely bothered by people calling her a boy and insinuating that she’ll grow up into a man. George is afraid to tell her mom her problems. “She was a girl, and no one knew it.” Wait, didn’t the previous page just say that a boy had to “become” a girl through pills and surgery? Is George “really” a girl or isn’t she?

At school, the kids walk up the stairs with the girls using the handrail to the right, and the boys using the one to the left. Why? I don’t know, this book sure genders a lot of activities in weird ways. At journal time the kids write about colors and George really wants to be pink so people “would know she was a girl.” George has a best girl friend named Kelly.



More contradictions: In one paragraph George thinks “I am a girl” and the next “I want to be a girl.”

Aaaand it’s audition time. Teacher hands out blue cards to the boys and pink cards to the girls. (Everyone in this book is super obsessed with blue and pink for boys and girls. Is there any part of real life like this, except a baby shower?) George hopes that all the girls who try out are terrible so she’ll get the part instead of a “regular girl.”

George auditions as Charlotte, Teacher says the part has to be for one of the girls. Teacher offers George one of the other parts but George does not want them. George angrily yells at Kelly when Kelly asks how her audition went.

At home, George’s brother continues to be a bro stereotype, and George thinks about how she hates gym class. “Gym class meant boys yelling at her to run faster or throw the ball harder.” Finally, an experience that sounds like it could have come out of my own memories of girlhood! Boys were awful to me in gym class.

But surely George’s personality doesn’t have to adhere to every single feminine stereotype out there, right? Loves pink and makeup, boy crazy, bad at sports… Am I supposed to not be offended just because George is trans?

Teacher offers George the other lead role besides Charlotte: Wilbur. George turns it down, because she can’t bear to play a boy on stage. Kelly ends up getting the part of Charlotte, and of course George is super upset and angsty and not in the least excited for her friend. “She had genuinely started to believe that if people could see her onstage as Charlotte, maybe they would see that she was a girl offstage too.” Healthy!

George admits to Kelly:

“What if I am a girl?”

Kelly, understandably confused, asks, “You have a you-know-what, right?” and “You know, I thought about whether I was a boy once. Back when I wanted to be a firefighter and I thought all firefighters were boys. Is it like that?”

“I don’t think so, Kelly.”

The world these kids live in is super gender-policed. No female firefighters?

George returns home to find her mom has discovered her magazine stash. Also, apparently George has been borrowing her mom’s clothes and shoes to try on since she was a little kid. Mom understandably would like George not to wear her things, and says she’s going to throw the magazines out. Which does seem mean to me. Let the kid have his magazines! Buy him some thrift-store dress-up clothes if he wants. I still played dress-up at ten. Kids don’t have to grow up so fast.

George plays Mariokart with her brother, and she wants to be the princess but chooses Toad instead. George’s brother tries to ask her why she’s fighting with Kelly and George yells and gets super angry.

At recess George wishes she could join in with the girls’ jump rope game. (When I was in school, boys played jump rope and four-square and pretty much did whatever they wanted. My best girl friend played touch football with the boys during recess for all of elementary school. Have things changed since I was a kid?) Kelly comes up to George and apologizes for getting the part of Charlotte. Kelly says if George thinks she’s a girl, then Kelly thinks so too. And she’s also read about transgender people online, and asks George if she’s getting hormones. (These kids are super well-informed! The power of the internet!) George tells Kelly about her mom taking away the magazines.

“But you didn’t steal them! What right does she have to take them from you?” “Sometimes transgender people don’t get rights.” George had read on the internet about transgender people being treated unfairly.

(This was the only glimmer of actual humor I found in the book, and I fear it was unintentional.)

Everyone practices for the play while George steams about not getting to be Charlotte, even though she totally could have been Wilbur if she wanted! But validation, you know. George is made to be one of the stage hands instead, painting sets, where one of the other boys–Jeff– complains about wearing a smock because it’s too much like a dress. Jeff then jokes about killing Charlotte under his foot because she’s a spider, and George retaliates by painting SOME JERK on the back of his shirt. Jeff punches George in the stomach and she vomits on him. George is unwilling to enter the boys bathroom even to rinse her mouth out.

Waiting in the school office, George sees a flier: SUPPORT SAFE SPACES FOR GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH.

She wondered where she could find a safe space like that, and if there would be other girls like her there. Maybe they could talk about makeup together. Maybe they could even try some on.

Makeup?? that’s your first thought upon learning about safe spaces??

George isn’t punished and leaves with her mom. George studies herself in the mirror: “Someday, testosterone would grow a terrible beard all over her face.” Mom sits down with George and expresses concern: “Being gay is one thing. But being that kind of gay?” (I assume she means flaming?) Mom says she became concerned after finding George’s magazines. George says “I’m not any kind of gay. Because I’m a girl.” Mom says George is only ten and she’ll feel differently in a few years.

George calls Kelly. They talk about the play. Kelly offers to give George the part of Charlotte, to trade off performances with her.

“I can make sure my dad comes to the afternoon show. You could totally do it! In fact, you make a better Charlotte than I do.”

Men make better women than women do! it’s just a fact.

They decide to sneak George in when Kelly is supposed to be performing. Kelly buys into George’s idea that seeing George as a spider in a play will make George’s mom see she’s really a girl!

George’s brother Scott tells George he is fine if George is gay. Scott says their dad told him George “might be like that.” George tells him actually, she thinks she’s a girl. Scott considers for a minute, and then he asks George if she wants to “go all the way” and makes “a snipping motion.”

George squeezed her legs together. “Maybe someday.” “Weird. But it kinda makes sense. No offense, but you don’t make a very good boy.” “I know.”

I’ll just leave that there.

So George’s mom is the only one in George’s friends and family who isn’t 100% on board with George’s girl-feels at this point. Everything is Mom’s fault, always. It’s not like Mom is a real woman, with her refusal to wear makeup and skirts.

Backstage at the show, Kelly gives George her Charlotte costume. George performs the opening monologue flawlessly, and Kelly fawningly tells her how great it was. Backstage, the kids discuss what just happened.

“He was good. Better than Kelly, even. No offense, Kelly.” Kelly shrugged. “I wasn’t that great.”

The teacher leading the play sees what’s going on but just shrugs and lets them get on with it. George is so good as Charlotte she makes the audience cry. George goes onstage to bow and chooses at the last moment to curtsy instead.



George finds mom, who says

“I didn’t even know it was you at first. I thought it was supposed to be Kelly, but then I realized I was seeing my son onstage, and nearly everyone in the audience thought he was a girl.” George’s lips quivered, but her voice was clear. “I did too.” “Did what?” “I already told you. I’m a girl.” Mom’s face turned to stone and her mouth grew small. “Let’s not talk about this right now.”

The principal comes by to congratulate George and tells the mom, “You can’t control who your children are, but you can certainly support them, am I right?” Because sure, your first assumption would be to assume that the boy playing a spider in the play is secretly trans…

Next day on the playground the girls congratulate George on her performance. Kelly is also there, but her performance is naturally forgotten.

“I didn’t even realize you were a boy at first,” one of the girls tells George. “You’re a boy. Why would you want to play a girl’s part anyway?” the one mean girl asks.

“I couldn’t even imagine being a boy onstage, even if everyone knew I was really a girl. I just couldn’t do it,” said Maddy. (said no female actress ever.) “Yeah, it would be too embarrassing,” said Denise. (said no girl ever)

Jeff comes over to bully George. Kelly tries to defend George and Jeff tells Kelly that George is “more of a girl than you’ll ever be.”

Kelly tells George her uncle is taking them to the zoo that weekend, and they can dress up as “best girl friends.” “When girls dress up, they wear skirts,” Kelly informs George. George tells Kelly she wants to be called “Melissa.”

Actually, I’ve seen George used as a girl’s name a lot, as a nickname for Georgette or Georgina. But I guess it’s a little too butch for this George.

George’s mom is waiting when she gets home. “You really do feel like a girl, don’t you?” Mom is finally on board! They reminisce about how George used to steal Mom’s clothes to dress up and how Mom wouldn’t let George have a tutu and George threw a tantrum. They decide they both could use “someone to talk to” about all this.

George knew that seeing a therapist was the first step secret girls like her took when they wanted everyone to see who they were. “And then maybe I could grow my hair out and be a girl?”

Mom returns George’s magazines to her.

The next day, George wakes up excited for the zoo. She wonders about what kind of skirt she will wear, and whether she and Kelly will match. (?)

At Kelly’s house, Kelly ushers George into the secret perfume-scented den of frills and fantasy where all us ladies get ready for things. “It was as if the pages of all her magazines had come to life in Kelly’s bedroom.” Kelly gives George “a flared skirt of purple swirls and a hot pink tank top.” Kelly tells George she never wears skirts to school because “boys are dirty and try to look up them.”

No one passing by the basement apartment window would have ever suspected that there weren’t two girls in the room below, bonding over clothes, boys, and whatever else it was girls gossiped about.

George tries on the clothes and feels magical and twirls and crosses her legs so she feels “like a model.” Her heart flutters every time Kelly calls her Melissa. George tries on more clothes and vetoes the outfit Kelly was going to wear. Mostly Kelly stands by to photograph George and ooh and ahh at her, like some sort of makeover assistant. Kelly fixes Melissa’s hair (at some point we’ve transitioned to calling George Melissa now).

Melissa’s frame was thin, and she was too young to be expected to have curves. She was wearing girls’ clothes and a girl’s hairdo, even if it was short. She really did look like a girl.

Kelly explains she got makeup as a gift but doesn’t know how to apply it. Melissa has read all about it and proceeds to show Kelly:

how to apply the blush high on the cheekbone and then blend downward, and how to choose colors to complement her light-brown skin.

Kelly does a few cartwheels and “half the time her skirt would flip right over her belly, leaving her pink underwear showing.” Meanwhile, “Melissa was looking at her reflection from every angle she could.”

They’re almost ready but Melissa is still wearing boy’s underwear. “No one would be able to see them, but she would know all day that they were there.”

Kelly gives Melissa a pair of her own underwear to keep, “light pink, covered in tiny red hearts.”

They ride to the zoo with Kelly’s uncle and Melissa admires her reflection in the rearview mirror. She’s excited to know that she will be walking around all day as a girl where “children and adults and even the animals would see her.”

Melissa continues to notice her reflection in all reflective surfaces at the zoo. Kelly takes her into the girl’s bathroom.

The air was cool, wet, and smelled of musk. The tiles were gray and green, not pink as Melissa had imagined. More noticeably, there were no urinals, only a row of stalls on the left and rows of sinks, mirrors, and dispensers oozing pink soap on the right. She was standing in the girls’ room. Not even the eloquent Charlotte had a word for how she felt in that moment.

Melissa pees sitting down and “didn’t even tell Kelly afterward. That part of this magnificent day was her personal secret.”



Kelly tells Melissa that she’s surrounded by boys in her regular life and that it’s nice to finally have some girl time. Kelly falls asleep in the back of the car but Melissa is too busy “remembering the best week of her life. So far.”

The end.

In general, the prose is dull, the dialogue is awful, and the plot is pretty boring. This book hits every box of the trans activist bingo card. Male entitlement, gender policing, devaluing of female feelings, contradictory cult-speak, inappropriately sexual talk for the age range, internalized homophobia with all same-sex attraction attributed to “gender feelings,” offensive feminine stereotypes of womanhood, violent outbursts at every slight, and a focus on personality as performance, where “being yourself” requires accessories and societal validation.

As a woman who actually went through girlhood, I find this book offensive and damaging to female people. It bothers me that this book is going to be taught by a lot of well-meaning teachers to classes in an effort towards diversity and inclusivity. What are girls who read this supposed to think? That if they don’t enjoy oppressive stereotypes of femininity, they aren’t girls? Is it really going to help feminine boys, who already know that the worst insult in the world is to be called a “girl”, to know that enjoying feminine things apparently actually makes them a girl? Isn’t that just going to further enshrine toxic masculinity in young boys? Does anyone really think that reinforcing gender in this way will ease the power of gender socialization on kids?



Equating femininity with womanhood devalues women. I started out just wanting to do a snarky review, but I’m honestly hurting for the kids who will have to suffer this book.

The tagline of this book is “Be who you are.” and I agree. Be who you are! Pursue what interests you and dress how you want! Just don’t assume that liking femininity means you have any idea what being a girl is like.