Today, the 31st of March, is Transgender Day of Visibility.
This is a day of pride and celebration, of representation and reminding people that trans people exist, are here, are visible, and for us as a library to say YOU HAVE OUR SUPPORT.
When I asked my esteemed colleague, Chief Editor of this here Teen Blog and the One Who Watches Over All Of Our YA Programming if he had any message to pass on to our trans communities for Transgender Day of Visibility, he had this to say:
We love celebrating with our vibrant communities or something like that but not exactly that because that sounds awful and boring.
It came from the heart.
So vibrant community, brave young people, you lot who know who you are, those of you who are proudly visible, and those of you who are not quite ready to be visible, have a wonderful Transgender Day of Visibility. Be staunch in your identity, and know that your library thinks you’re cool
And, because we’re a library, I’m ending this post with a list of books with very visible trans characters. Well, not exactly visible because they’re characters in books so you can’t actually see them, just the words that describe them. But I guess there are pictures of some of them on the book covers? And you can see those.
Too much rambling!
Have some books. These ones all have trans characters. There are trans superheroes, Pride and Prejudice but trans, fake dating, cheerleaders, Victorian ghosts, and kung-fu. Or you can have a look through our recently updated LGBTQIA+ booklist if you wanna read about other queer people.
Felix ever after / Callender, Kacen
“Felix Love has never been in love, painful irony that it is. He desperately wants to know why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. He is proud of his identity, but fears that he’s one marginalization too many– Black, queer, and transgender. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. He didn’t count on his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi-love triangle.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Dreadnought / Daniels, April
“Danny Tozer has a problem: she just inherited the powers of Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero. Before he expired, Dreadnought passed his mantel to her, and those secondhand superpowers transformed Danny’s body into what she’s always thought it should be. Now there’s no hiding that she’s a girl. Between her father’s dangerous obsession with “curing” her girlhood, her best friend suddenly acting like he’s entitled to date her, and her fellow superheroes arguing over her place in the ranks, Danny feels like she’s in over her head. And there’s Dreadnought’s murderer threatening destruction. If Danny can’t sort through the confusion of coming out, master her powers, and stop Utopia in time, humanity faces extinction.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Cheer up! : love and pompoms / Frasier, Crystal
“Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian who’s under pressure to join the cheerleader squad to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend BeBe is a people-pleaser, a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life in order to maintain their support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped up social pressures (not to mention micro-aggressions and other queer youth problems), the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they’d lost and discover there may be other, sweeter feelings springing up between them.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Wish upon a satellite / Labelle, Sophie
“When non-binary teen Ciel and their best friend Stephie share an unexpected kiss, the world truly shakes on its axis. In this new book for teens, Sophie Labelle’s beloved characters first introduced in Ciel and Ciel in All Directions are leaving childhood behind and grappling with new questions of identity, loyalty, and how to negotiate dating and relationships in the age of social media.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Ryan and Avery / Levithan, David
“When Ryan and Avery met at a queer prom, they felt an instant connection. This is the story of their first 10 dates: the tender hopes, the skittish fears, the difficulty of introducing someone into your pre-existing life. There is always the possibility of heartbreak– and the chance that maybe, just maybe, you’ve found the right person to love.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Lakelore / McLemore, Anna-Marie
“When two non-binary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake, can they keep their worlds above water intact? Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water, but Bastián and Lore are the only ones who’ve been there. When the lines between air and water begin to blur and the world under the lake drifts above the surface Bastián and Lore have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There’s just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven’t spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they’re trying to hide.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Most ardently : a Pride & prejudice remix / Novoa, Gabe Cole
“Oliver Bennet feels trapped. Not just by the endless corsets, petticoats and skirts he’s forced to wear on a daily basis, but also by society’s expectations. The world—and the vast majority of his family and friends—think Oliver is a girl named Elizabeth. When Oliver becomes acquainted with Darcy, a sulky young man who had been rude to “Elizabeth” at a recent social function, he comes to find that Darcy is actually a sweet, intelligent boy with a warm heart. As Oliver is able to spend more time as his true self, often with Darcy, part of him dares begin to hope that his dream of love and life as a man could be possible.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Fierce femmes and notorious liars : a dangerous trans girl’s confabulous memoir / Thom, Kai Cheng
“This is the story of a young Asian trans girl, pathological liar, and kung-fu expert who runs away from her parents’ abusive home in a rainy city called Gloom. Striking off on her own, she finds her true family in a group of larger-than-life trans femmes who make their home in a mysterious pleasure district known only as the Street of Miracles. When one of their number is brutally murdered, our protagonist joins her sisters in fighting back against the transphobes, violent johns, and cops that stalk the Street of Miracles. But when things go terribly wrong, she must find the truth within herself in order to stop the violence and discover what it really means to grow up and find your family.” (Catalogue)
Always the almost : a novel / Underhill, Edward
“Sixteen-year-old trans boy Miles Jacobson’s New Year resolutions include winning back his ex-boyfriend and winning the Midwest’s biggest classical piano competition, but when a new, proudly queer boy moves to town, Miles reconsiders who he was and who he is now.” (Catalogue)
The spirit bares its teeth / White, Andrew Joseph
“Set in an alternate Victorian England where mediums control the dead, sixteen-year-old autistic transgender boy Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness — a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness — and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas to help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world — if the school doesn’t break him first.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
