Another reason it appeals to me is that I think it's an example of manga that has significant crossover appeal for adults, which seems counterintuitive in some ways--why should I care that it appeal to adults, after all! But the art and the story have this understated elegance, and it really gets across in what feels to me to be an authentic depiction of childhood that dissonance between the mundane concerns of family and school and fitting in and this giant, consuming secret that these kids don't feel like they can talk to anyone about. It handles adolescent friendships really well, too. The art is often stark, the dialogue and narration spare, and it really feels like a book full of silences, while still feeling hopeful and engaged--the silence is not desolate, it is far more complex than that. The expressions conveying Shuichi's (nonverbalized) emotions about the gift of feminine hairclips from a classmate who reacts well to learning part of his secret, the way the genderswapped production of the Rose of Versailles in the kids' school reflects on their moments of difficulty and their desires and fears, as well as social interactions. I'm really looking forward to future volumes.

Also, because I'm a bookseller, I notice things like packaging. This book is being produced in America by Fantagraphics, who tend to do alternative-esque, tending more toward literary comics and graphic novels for an adult audience. The packaging reflects that, with its avant-garde typesetting on the cover, the fact that it is bound in high-quality hardcover format, the striking color against a black-and-white background. I am hoping this title wins awards, and I think it's an excellent choice to give to young people who ask for resources on gender identity. It confronts identity head-on without ignoring other aspects of a child's life, and the art is approachable and comforting. I'm glad to see manga of this literary quality to round out the more popular manga we see so much of (not that there's anything wrong with that! But it's good to have variety).

I'm going to come back to the question of intended audience on this one, because I think it's really important to how one evaluates literature about minority groups, especially when that literature carries a didactic message. A good book will be written in such a way as to make it available to a variety of audiences, but in the end the author makes certain narrative choices that make it easy to determine who the book is for. I usually look at the point of view character, the plot, and the way other characters think about the minority character in question, as well as which characters are portrayed with any amount of agency and which ones get active character development.

I usually contrast Luna and Parrotfish in terms of YA trans lit, and interestingly, Rockefeller and I seem to have somewhat differing opinions on these books. I don't think Luna is as wonderful a portrayal as it is often lauded to be, and the reason for this is that it reads very much as a Sympathize With The Victims book to me. The protagonist of the book is a straight teen girl, Regan, whose sibling, whose given name is Liam but who increasingly adopts the female identity of Luna, is MTF trans. The book focuses largely on Regan's coming to terms with her sibling's transition (and often fails to use appropriate pronouns as part of this confusion). The book very much focuses on how someone might adjust to having someone important in their life transition, and Luna's preternatural perfection in most things make her a somewhat abstract character, and the moments in which she develops are often more concerned with Regan's emotional response and development than Luna's, as Regan witnesses increasing strife with the family, helps Luna on a shopping trip for women's clothing, etc. In the end, Luna pays a heavy price for claiming her identity--she moves away, effectively estranged from her parents who do not accept her. This kind of literature can be instructive for readers who are trying to understand the trans people in their lives, but its message of hope to trans youth directly is... not very hopeful. In general I find Peters writes Victim Stories around LGBT topics, especially trans--the short story in grl2grl is somewhat brutal and forbidding for the trans guy protagonist.

I think Parrotfish is a much stronger book because it provides a fairly well-adjusted and convincingly, if not universally, accepted transgender protagonist/point of view character. I do take Rockefeller's point that it dwells too much on gender stuff to the detriment of the pacing and plot development. I think it's important to have books that portray trans characters that speak *to trans youth* and not primarily or, it sometimes feels, ONLY, to straight readers curious to learn more about trans life.