A few years ago, I came out to my mom the morning after my senior prom. She was surprised, then quiet, then asked what my real orientation was. I said, “I have no idea, but I like this one girl.” She was a little confused, but she kissed me and said, “As long as she makes you happy.” For the next few weeks, she asked a lot of questions: when did I realize? What was my new girlfriend’s orientation? What was the word for this or that? I WAS happy, right?
Fast forward about two years. My mom sits me down and tells me that she needs my help with her next book. She’s been writing middle-grade girls’ books (like, 9-14 range) since I was eight, and she says she has an idea that she really, really wants to get right. It follows the plot of Romeo and Juliet, she says, and the main character is a twelve-year-old girl realizing she has a crush on another girl when they put on the play for English class.
Fast forward another year to now. STAR-CROSSED is about to come out, and it is absolutely amazing.
My mom has poured her heart and soul into making sure this is a positive thing for kids to read.
I’ve been reading and editing and helping with this book since its first draft and I’ve been, metaphorically and sometimes literally bouncing up and down on my heels, waiting to be able to tell people about it. It’s beyond sweet, and there’s a ton of Shakespeare and humor and goofy preteen drama and twelve-year-old girls flirting and Star Wars jokes and a glossary of Shakespearean insults in the back (yes, really), and it’s just so fun and positive and smart and I want to show it to every kid I know.
This book is for LGBT kids, written by a mom who has asked questions and done her research and tried as hard as she possibly could to make her own queer kid feel safe and loved and valid, and it REALLY shows. Mattie (the cutie on the left) and Gemma (the cutie on the right) are given space to learn about themselves, and ultimately they don’t have to figure themselves out right away or come out to everyone at once or choose a label. They’re kids. It’s okay to still be figuring things out. It’s okay.
Fun facts:
My mom said from the beginning she wanted both girls on the cover to make it clear what the book was about; then when they got the final artwork and Mattie’s hair was short, my mom wrote back and asked the artist to do the hair over to make it as obvious as possible that Mattie is a girl.
When a few people started buzzing about Mattie being the youngest bisexual protagonist they’ve seen, she went back and changed passages to confirm that Mattie likes boys and girls.
When I asked for a happier and less ambiguous ending scene, she set Mattie and Gemma up on a frigging date.
It comes out on March 14, 2017. Please join me in GETTING HYPE FOR STAR-CROSSED ❤
EDIT: THE RESPONSE TO THIS POST HAS BEEN SO INCREDIBLE YOU GUY OH MY GOSH. The book has shot to #5 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases list because of you lovelies. If you want to preorder Star-Crossed you can do so here, and if you want to learn more or read reviews or send my mom a nice message you can do so from her site or Twitter. The more reviews it gets on Amazon and Goodreads – even single-sentence ones – the more it gets promoted. I LOVE YOU ALL
“If A Wrinkle in Time succeeds at the box office, it could open the door for not only more directors of color being given budges of $100 million+, it could also lead to non-white leads being cast in films. Maybe, our dream of seeing Percy Jackson adapted with three non-white leads could actually happen.”
The literally silent women protagonist leaves a super bad taste in my mouth.
She’s deaf and speaks with sign language, she’s not a silent woman. Like, can we agree that deaf representation in media is important? Can we agree that ASL representation in media is important? This is an adult-oriented romance/sci-fi movie where the female lead is a deaf woman. How can you act like this isn’t significant? The last gif has a deaf woman in the 60s standing up to an aggressive man and telling him to go fuck himself.
This movie is doing something that has probably never been done before. But hey, she can’t talk “normally” like a hearing woman and that’s bad, so go off I guess.
From the trailer it looks like she’s mute, not deaf. So I’m gonna add that on an artistic level, the mute protagonist is also probably a direct homage to the fairy tale of The Little Mermaid.
I saw a quote somewhere from Octavia Spencer, saying that she thinks one of the best things about this movie is that, since the two romantic leads are mute, much of the dialogue in the movie is spoken by a black woman and a closeted gay man, two people whose voices would have been silenced in real life by 1960s society.
fun story I first became obsessed with the harry potter series and hermione in particular in yr 3 of primary school and I decided I wanted to be like hermione in every way so I started reading *lots* and working super hard in school, got a reputation for bookishness and being the smart kid that I kept up into high school and lol here I am graduating in a few weeks from Cambridge all bc I adored this clever bookworm in a children’s book series and absorbed her into my personality as a child like ???
basically long story short female role models in kids media are EVERYTHING
Ppl be like “ I want an actual male gem, not just Steven.”
Jeez, it’s like having only one character
to represent your whole gender
in a group composed all of another gender
is a bit upsetting huh?
I wonder
what
that’s like
no really
can you
even imagine
what this lack of representation
MUST
FEEL
LIKE
This
post
isn’t
long
enough
none of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either
it’s actually physically impossible for me to not reblog this post.
I want to say I’ve reblogged this before, but I’m reblogging again for the brilliant addition of, “None of the listed shows are named after the one female character, either” because FUCKING THANK YOU.
mmmmmhm.
Every time I reblog this, there are new shows on the list.
Wow
it’s almost
as though
this happens
almost constantly
But normally you don’t notice, because it’s not about you.
willowfoot 