I come from ‘the system’s not working so you just fix stuff.’ Let’s just start fixing it, let’s just start changing it.” Gino took a Sharpie to a physical copy of George, thus renaming it Melissa’s Story, as they came to believe it should be. “I come from trans, I come from queer, I come from do-it-yourself. Although they’ve spoken openly about wishing they had been more assertive in selecting a different title, a topic discussed in the q&a portion of the book’s paperback edition, in the summer of 2021, Gino took action. 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. 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.
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