American Teenager

Thank you to Shelf Awareness Pro and Abrams Books for the free ARC.
This slice-of-life book was both easy and hard to read. No individual chapter took long for me to get through, but some chapters really troubled me and made me re-read them before moving forward.
For readers who already recognize the humanity of trans youth, I find this useful for expanding sensitivity to a broader spectrum of trans kids. Not a masculine/feminine spectrum, but rather the kids stress-puking at every legislative cycle and those who really don't care that they're trans. I had ideas of how to support trans kids somewhere between those two positions and I feel slightly better equipped if I work with any of the more extreme ends.
For any reader who's coming in with another perspective, I fear that the realistic writing and the “just like other kids” thesis might reinforce the notion that gender nonconformity is just a phase. Teenagers do a lot of poorly-thought-out things, as evidenced within this book by many of the interactions with friends, family, schoolwork, etc. This book would not convince anyone that teenagers have the wisdom to determine their own gender identity. That's probably not the goal, it's just something that struck me.