Too Bright to See
Ratings15
Average rating4.4
A Newbery Honor Book • Winner of the Stonewall Book Award • A National Book Award Finalist "A gentle, glowing wonder, full of love and understanding." –The New York Times Book Review Cover may vary. It's the summer before middle school and eleven-year-old Bug's best friend Moira has decided the two of them need to use the next few months to prepare. For Moira, this means figuring out the right clothes to wear, learning how to put on makeup, and deciding which boys are cuter in their yearbook photos than in real life. But none of this is all that appealing to Bug, who doesn't particularly want to spend more time trying to understand how to be a girl. Besides, there's something more important to worry about: A ghost is haunting Bug's eerie old house in rural Vermont...and maybe haunting Bug in particular. As Bug begins to untangle the mystery of who this ghost is and what they're trying to say, an altogether different truth comes to light--Bug is transgender.
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This was great! I loved the way that Lukoff presented Bug's journey through the lens of a haunting and a feeling of wrongness. So many tears in this one - both happy and sad!
btw earlier in this stack of reviews I said I'd listened to 3 audiobooks in the last week but actually it was 4. I mean middle grade audios are like 4 hours long so it's been breezy. Anyway this is why I haven't done anything in the past week except read. I'm very behind on television. I STRUGGLE.
ok enough about my PROBLEMS, I loved this book and I think it's great that the audiobook reader is OwnVoices for the character.
I love that this is a book that validates young trans people in a slightly different way than a lot of other youth media and in fact seems to be in conversation with some other media–reassuring readers that it's okay to be questioning and not to immediately always KNOW your gender identity and that that doesn't make it any less valid (but nor does it invalidate those who have had a more immediate understanding that they are trans).
Bug is just such a GOOD KID and also their haunted house is cool and ughhh just chef's kiss
What a lovely read. Bug is a great character and a wonderful kid, and the depiction of grief is empathetic and realistic despite all the ghostly happenings. Probably a 3.5 for me-as-a-reader, but an easy 4 stars or more for the intended MG audience.
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