#kyle lukoff

[midshipmank]

i haven’t read this book yet, but i feel like tumblr & especially jumblr need to know about its existence

[transbookoftheday]

Different Kinds of Fruit by Kyle Lukoff

In this funny and hugely heartfelt novel from a Stonewall Award winner, a sixth-grader’s life is turned upside down when she learns her dad is trans.

Annabelle Blake fully expects this school year to be the same as every other: same teachers, same classmates, same everything. So she’s elated to discover there’s a new kid in town. To Annabelle, Bailey is a breath of fresh air. She loves hearing about their life in Seattle, meeting their loquacious (and kinda corny) parents, and hanging out at their massive house. And it doesn’t hurt that Bailey has a cute smile, nice hands (how can someone even have nice hands?) and smells really good.

Suddenly sixth grade is anything but the same. And when her irascible father shares that he and Bailey have something big (and surprising) in common, Annabelle begins to see herself, and her family, in a whole new light. At the same time she starts to realize that her community, which she always thought of as home, might not be as welcoming as she had thought. Together Annabelle and Bailey discover how these categories that seem to mean so much — boy, girl, gay, straight — aren’t so clear-cut after all.

[lgbtqreads]

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month 2025!

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month! We’re celebrating as we do with books starring Jewish protagonists, and for more recs, check out previous years’ posts! Children’s Just Like Queen Esther by Ari Moffic and Kerry Olitzky (text) and Rena Yehuda Newman (illustration) Atara loves to wear her crown – to the library, to the dentist, even to her swim lessons. It gives her confidence, and shows the…

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month 2025!

[iambic-stan]

last book + last stethoscope, part 54

Covid lockdown is over, it's time for fourteen-year-old A to go back to school, and he's eager to explain to his parents and everyone he knows that he's always been a boy in Kyle Lukoff's inspirational fantasy, A World Worth Saving (shown here with MDF's starry night capridium titanium scope). Despite the fact that his parents are self-professed progressive liberals, they don't take it so well when he comes out to them. When the rabbi at their synagogue is accepting and wants to celebrate A's identity, his parents decide it's time to stop attending services, and they find a different sort of religious congregation in a group called SOSAD (Save our Sons and Daughters). What they don't realize is that this support group intent on "curing" trans children is actually run by a demon who feeds off the angst, sorrow, and anguish of the families attending the meetings. A, along with other kids he meets at SOSAD meetings, wind up on an unlikely adventure that is both fantastical and unfortunately realistic in our current climate, but it's hopeful. In my view, it's dark for a middle-grade novel, but this is very much the world adults have created for trans youth, so they're living it already.

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

A World Worth Saving by Kyle Lukoff

goodreads | storygraph

Have you read this trans book?

Yes and I liked it

Yes and I didn't like it

No

No but I'd like to

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onSep 29, 2025

Covid lockdown is over, but A’s world feels smaller than ever. Coming out as trans didn’t exactly go well, and most days, he barely leaves his bedroom, let alone the house. But the low point of A’s life isn’t online school, missing his bar mitzvah, or the fact that his parents monitor his phone like hawks—it’s the weekly Save Our Sons and Daughters meetings his parents all but drag him to. At SOSAD, A and his friends Sal and Yarrow sit by while their parents deadname them and wring their hands over a nonexistent “transgender craze.” After all, sitting in suffocating silence has to be better than getting sent away for “advanced treatment,” never to be heard from again. When Yarrow vanishes after a particularly confrontational meeting, A discovers that SOSAD doesn’t just feel soul-sucking . . . it’s run by an actual demon who feeds off the pain and misery of kids like him. And it’s not just SOSAD—the entire world is beset by demons dining on what seems like an endless buffet of pain and bigotry. But how is one trans kid who hasn’t even chosen a name supposed to save his friend, let alone the world? And is a world that seems hellbent on rejecting him even worth saving at all?

Mod opinion: I haven't read this book, although I have heard of it. I probably won't read it myself, because middle grade fantasy rarely interests me, but I do hope a trans kid will find themself in this book!

[canontranscharacter-oftheday]

A from A World Worth Saving by Kyle Lukoff is a trans boy and uses he/him pronouns!

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Round 1D

Choose a book:

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

Different Kinds of Fruit by Kyle Lukoff

Voting ended onMar 8, 2025

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all. Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.

Romance, contemporary, timeslip, science fiction, adult

Different Kinds of Fruit by Kyle Lukoff

Endorsement from submitter: "A bold exploration of intracommunity issues surrounding trans and nonbinary identities, and also a very sweet story of middle school friendship and self-realization."

In this funny and hugely heartfelt novel from a Stonewall Award winner, a sixth-grader’s life is turned upside down when she learns her dad is trans.

Annabelle Blake fully expects this school year to be the same as every other: same teachers, same classmates, same everything. So she’s elated to discover there’s a new kid in town. To Annabelle, Bailey is a breath of fresh air. She loves hearing about their life in Seattle, meeting their loquacious (and kinda corny) parents, and hanging out at their massive house. And it doesn’t hurt that Bailey has a cute smile, nice hands (how can someone even have nice hands?) and smells really good.

Suddenly sixth grade is anything but the same. And when her irascible father shares that he and Bailey have something big (and surprising) in common, Annabelle begins to see herself, and her family, in a whole new light. At the same time she starts to realize that her community, which she always thought of as home, might not be as welcoming as she had thought. Together Annabelle and Bailey discover how these categories that seem to mean so much— boy, girl, gay, straight— aren’t so clear-cut after all.

Contemporary, family, middle grade

[sassyalone]

'The girl ran barefoot over the lawn, a warm breeze caressing her face,' I imagine. That girl sounds like she's having fun. 'She brushed the dirt from her cutoff jean shorts. I sure could go for some lemonade, she thought, wiping sweat from her brow.' I want to be that girl. Not myself. Everything she does sounds significant. Real, somehow, in a way that my life isn't. When I do those things they're just...the things that I'm doing. Not some plucky heroine, just a...just me. Even reading on the porch sounds more interesting when I pretend to be a character in a book doing it. Reading A Book On The Porch, instead of just reading a book on the porch.

Too Bright to See, Kyle Lukoff