George

Written by: Alex Gino

First line: George pulled a silver house key out of the smallest pocket of a large red backpack.

Why you should read this book: I adored this gentle, quiet story about a little trans girl who wants nothing more than to play Charlotte in her school's performance of Charlotte's Web but isn't quite ready to explain her motivations to the world. George is well aware of her own gender, but no one else knows her secret, which basically involves looking wistfully at teen magazines and pretending the girls in the photographs are her real friends. When she works up the courage to share her true identity with her best friend, an entire new world of possibility opens up and she begins to navigate the world according to an entirely new set of rules.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're a hateful, gender-essentialist bigot.