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.

I went and checked the American Indians in Children's Literature blog to see what Debbie has to say, and unsurprisingly she really likes this book. It's good to have her perspective on this, too, because the book felt very authentic to me, very much like what this girl's experience of her family and community would be today, and the art was so evocative of a particular and particularly modern (if, at this point, a little bit dated) life in this culture.

I think the things that really worked for me were the little details--the living room with the television set seemed so lived in and so descriptive of the family, it didn't have that generic 'this is A Living Room' style of art where only the things that are remarked upon by the text are shown. This book had so much realistic detail in the art and so much resonance between the content and the style and shape in the repetitions in the text, which altogether brought out such a living experience of participating in this ritual.

I also really liked the way the book brought out both the protagonist's agency and her community. We got to see her making a commitment to learn the dance and find the things she needs for her dress, and also her female role models who supported her commitment and aided her when she asked. It's a good book from a gender perspective, too, as we see a realistic portrayal of family broadly construed, and a range of women in different careers and capacities helping the girl out. It reads as somewhat idealistic next to the bitterness in Absolutely True Diary, but I think this story is both believable and accurate as a particular representation--not all Native communities and families live in the kind of poverty Junior experiences growing up, though some do. It helps to have both realities shown, to give a broader sense than you can draw from just one book's depiction of a native culture.

I really liked this book a lot, and I'm happy to see it's being reprinted.

I am SO over the manipulative women in this show! I count FIVE in this episode alone! That's almost all the women with speaking parts! We still have the Hysterical Pregnancy Wife, also her conniving pregnancy coach/doula, we have Rachel threatening to quit if she doesn't get the lead (again), we've got Sue the cheerleading coach who uses images of the principal wearing compression hose (nevermind that it's for an airline commercial and not a sexual context at all) to blackmail him, and we have the pregnant Celibacy Club cheerleader, who tells her nice boyfriend it's his (even though they've never had sex) because he'd be a better father than his best friend, the ACTUAL father. UUUUUUUUUGH. These are horrible portrayals of all kinds of women--popular girls, competitive women, and hysterical wives. The redeeming moments were barely that, though I'll admit to liking Kurt's coming out scene and, well, pretty much all of his and Kim's scenes ever. That wasn't enough to make up for how disgusted I felt by the end of it. Also, not NEARLY enough Mercedes.

STILL not watching you, show.

I also read Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins, and have some things to say about it. I enjoyed it but have some serious reservations about how it doesn't incorporate gender or (especially) race or class into its analysis, and it definitely felt in a lot of places like a how-to-market-to-the-new-online-audiences-for-giant-corporations, which...um. I also think he wasn't thorough in his exploration of examples, and I felt like the examples he uses were chosen because they highlight his agenda, and he doesn't explore them on their own terms. This was most obvious to me with how he used Harry Potter fanfiction to highlight how children are learning new media literacy skills through play... but there's a lot more to fannish culture than just kids getting educated, and I think his analysis fell down right there.

But! Having read this book gave me great background for two recent things I've read and recommend to you now, including several essays in Cinema Journal devoted to vidding and fandom. It's not yet available online, but check your local academic library. Kristina Busse's introduction is fantastic. There are great articles in there about particular vids (Francesca Coppa takes on A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness and Alexis Lothian discusses 's breathtaking vid Us in terms of media piracy, and I really loved Julie Levin Russo's "User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of Convergence" for its ideas, analysis, and delightfully playful style.