melissa previously published as george alex gino

Six years later, amid changing cultural attitudes around queerness and trans acceptance, Gino reached a tipping point.

To which Gino, an ardent feminist, replied, “Oh, sneaky feminism. was that adult gatekeepers would prevent boys from reading the book of “girl” were included in the title. “The way I remember it, my first response was ‘Excuse me, what are you doing with the word ‘girl’?” The critique, Gino recalled. The word “Girl” was dropped, to Gino’s displeasure. The book, which Gino had lightheartedly dubbed “Girl George” as an allusion to the androgynous, gay 1980s musician Boy George, received its first name change at the hands of Scholastic’s marketing team. To Gino’s surprise, they eventually acquired an agent for the project and ultimately sold it to Scholastic, in 2014. “It was a little pet project,” Gino told PW.

Gino’s original intent was to print a few copies for distribution to trans youth via their local PFLAG organizations. In 2003, nonbinary author Gino, whose pronouns are they and them, began writing a story about a trans girl, the eponymous main character pre-transition, navigating gender identity and presentation when she is denied the chance to audition for the role of Charlotte in her school’s production of Charlotte's Web due to erroneously being labeled a boy. Melissa will be out in April and is available for preorder now.Alex Gino’s acclaimed trans middle grade novel George (Scholastic Press, 2015) is receiving an update in the form of a new name and a brand-new cover. On their blog, Gino explained why the book was called George in the first place and shared some of the amazing art that fans made to correct the title. The text inside won't change, so the name George will still appear to reflect the character's growth within the novel, but Melissa will be the first name readers will know her by.īut even before that, readers began making their own modifications to the cover with Sharpies, crayons, colored pencils, and even entire dust jackets.

Calling the book Melissa is a way to respect her, as well as all transgender people. What we call people matters and we all deserve to be referred to in ways that feel good to us. No matter how many people have come to know it as George, we felt it was important to fix the title. Earlier this year, Gino and their publishing company announced that the title of the book is officially changing to Melissa. Since its publication, many of the book's fans have grown to dislike the title, saying that it elevated the deadname of the character instead of her actual name. In 2015, Alex Gino published George, a children's novel about a trans girl named Melissa - George was the character's former name.

Melissa previously published as george alex gino