Mick & Michelle

Gr 9 Up—Fifteen-year-old Mick Mullins has always known that he was a girl, and that his name is Michelle. However, the problem has always been how to reveal this to her family: her two Irish cop parents, sweet sister, and bedridden grandfather, whom she idolizes. Her grandfather has always had a soft spot for Mick—being the only male grandchild—and Michelle worries that telling him would break his heart. As puberty begins to take hold, and Michelle's changing body becomes more and more unbearable, she is tortured between her desire to finally feel comfortable in her own skin and her fear of driving everyone she loves away. With better written YA books, such as If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo and The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson, about transgender teens, Rossing's novel doesn't really offer anything that would set it apart. Michelle is an overly sweet teenager; the scenes where she interacts with her family, especially with her grandfather, are touching, but ultimately, the book suffers from stilted dialogue. The conversations between characters are flat and seem forced, dampening what is a tender, if unspectacular, story.