Alex Gino book - Melissa / George

[InvisibleDragon]

Came across this article in the Guardian about a book for kids about a trans girl:
amp.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/02/alex-gino-childrens-novel-george-retitled-melissa-to-respect-trans-heroine

The book is being renamed because there was controversy about using the character's deadname as the title, hence it's in the news again. But it's been published for about 6 years and has a long Wikipedia article:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_(novel)

The plot / controversy description has left me feeling a bit skeeved out, for want of a better word. Apparently there are discussions about "dirty" magazines and clearing your browser cache to hide your internet search history from your parents. It strikes me as extremely inappropriate from a safeguarding perspective that these topics are being discussed (and normalised?) in a book written for a pre-teen audience.

What are anyone else's thoughts? I'm not usually prudish and I think age appropriate stories with more difficult themes (like Jacqueline Wilson's books about domestic violence, abuse, mental illness etc) can be very helpful for children. But this feels different. It's like it's subtly coaching children to accept inappropriate material/behaviour. But because it's wrapped up in a sparkly story about Melissa revealing her true self, no-one picks up on it.

I would say that in general when I go into the "young adult" or youth section of the library these days, I am squeeved by a lot of the books there.

Maybe not totally helpful but it seems to be a more general problem that a lot of books for this group are saturated with sexual material.

DD 10 has recently selected this book… IN THE CHILDREN’S SECTION! I just read a little chunk about trans girls wouldn’t be looking up skirts as they were girls not boys… Not acceptable. As if girls need more potential avenues to be exploited.

Also hiding search history from parents is just wrong. @InvisibleDragon thank you for highlighting that grubbiness.

I’ll be totally disregarding the Guardian recommended children’s books in the future.

From that wiki link

"Gino also wanted to write it because they noticed a lack of transgender middle-grade literature aimed for 3rd grade to 7th grade, and they hoped the book would “help transgender children feel less alone. They wanted to fill this need and teach children about these issues".

Did this person ever stop to think about why there was a lack of literature aimed at third to seventh grade?????? It's because this age group don't need to know the nitty gritty.

Past the basic everyone can dress as they like and play with what they like what do they honestly need to know about this subject at such a young age?

This age group need nothing further I agree @Boiledbeetle.

I might have to raise this with the library. Dirty magazines and encouraging hiding web history from parents isn’t required knowledge for 10 year olds fgs.

I work in libraries, and yes, in general this book is in juvenile fiction, not youth.

I also agree that the youth section is often quite dodgy. In fact that's largely how I think of it. It's easy reading, in some cases easier than stuff in the juvenile section, but has content that would not be accepted in juvenile fic.

That being said, I am fairly disinclined to remove books from public libraries, though they are not at all consistent about it. The last library I worked in quietly removed lots of Dr Seuss, but they'd lose their shit if you suggested getting rid of I am Jazz might be reasonable in light of subsequent events.