When the Moon Was Ours

But there was everything else. The idea of being called Miss or Ms. or, worse, Mrs. The thought of being grouped in when someone called out girls or ladies. The endless, echoing use of she and her, miss and ma'am. Yes, they were words. They were all just words. But each of them was wrong, and they stuck to him. Each one was a golden fire ant, and they were biting his arms and his neck and his bound-flat chest, leaving him bleeding and burning.

— A magical story with beautiful prose and a powerful message about claiming your gender, name and identity. 5 out of 5 moons and roses!

If this book doesn't win the Printz I'll eat my hat. Or someone's hat. I read it in one day. Incredible.

To the boys who get called girls,the girls who get called boys,and those who live outside these words.To those called names, and those searching for names of their own.To those who live on the edges,and in the spaces in between.I wish for you every light in the sky.

When the dedication of a book makes you tear up, that's when you know it's going to be good. That's when you know it's going to become one of YOUR books. The ones that feel compatible with your very soul.

This wasn't just good, it was phenomenal. Enchanting writing swept me up in the story from the very beginning, pulling me out of my papasan chair and into the swell of a carved-out pumpkin, a rusty old water tower, a painted silver moon. If simple, straightforward sentences full of action are the way you like your books, this one probably isn't for you. But if you read for the feeling of words–for the way they wrap around you, caress your skin, scratch at your ribs and your heart–you'll love Anna-Marie McLemore's writing. She takes a concept and, rather than trying to make you understand the mechanics of it, she writes the senses–the touch-taste-smell-sight-sound of it. The atmosphere. The impression.

She builds characters from the inside out, the essence of a spirit existing before their appearance, or their gender, or their name. But those things are still deemed important. The way we present ourselves to the world, the secrets we keep and the lies and truths we tell, the labels we choose for ourselves–those things grow from the core of us, and they belong to us and us alone. They are a choice that only we can make, based on who we are in our minds, our guts, our hearts.

This is a book about personhood. It is about the power of words, and the power of the secrets that we hold close and protect. It is about those secrets and how we are never obligated to tell them, that they are ours to keep or share as we wish. It is about how when we do decide to share with the people that we love, we can discover the potential within ourselves to grow a rainbow of roses, or summon the glowing moon.