For a long time, she stood there, just blinking.

She doesn’t judge or care about what others will say – she encourages George to be herself. When conflict arises and George feels like everything is falling apart for her, she isn’t sure where to turn, so she turns to her friend Kelly, who is supportive, caring, and compassionate with George. So what is George to do? Face ridicule and read the lines for Charlotte’s character anyway, or play it safe and audition for a boy’s role? When try-outs for the school play, Charlotte’s Web, start up, George doesn’t know what to do – she desperately wants the part of Charlotte, the spider who can spin words into her webs, but only girls are allowed to try out for the part. While she does have her best friend, Kelly, she is bullied and made fun of. But when George is alone, she refers to herself as Melissa, which is the name she has picked for herself. George’s father rarely sees her, so she doesn’t feel the need to even consider discussing it with him. To her mother and older brother, George is just George – a son and a little brother. She keeps them hidden inside a denim bag in her closet so that no one can find them. So she hides in her room, looking at magazines that she’s found over the years, full of make-up tips, hair advice, and models that she refers to as her friends. George is a girl in middle school who is struggling with her identity – she knows who she is, but she can’t tell anyone – including her mother, who she doesn’t believe would understand. It was such a short, little question, but she couldn’t make her mouth form the sounds. It will make you go back to your own childhood and wonder what you would have done if you were in George’s shoes, or her friend Kelly’s shoes.

It’s sweet, it’s funny, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s thought provoking. Let me stress that while this technically is a middle grade novel, I believe that it is a novel that everyone should read. When I saw that, I wasted no time grabbing my copy of it, and instead of being one of those books that I let sit in my Kindle library and end up forgetting about, this one nagged at me until I decided to read it. I heard about this book back when it first came out, probably about a year ago now, and I while I was intrigued, I don’t read as much middle grade fiction as I do young adult, so I never really bothered to pick a copy up until I saw it was on sale for $2.99 on Amazon for Kindle.

Alex gino