- Summary: Lily McGrother has known most of her life that she is a girl trapped in a boy’s body. As 8th grade approaches, the need to be her true self fills her with agony daily. She is picked on at school and not accepted by her father. But one day, she puts on a dress and steps outside to help her dad get the groceries and her life changes. A boy named Norbert Dorfman sees Tim (Lily) in that dress and doesn’t forget those blue eyes on the first day of school. Their friendship grows, despite some bumps (Norbert aka Dunkin joins the basketball team and hangs with the boys who pick on Lily) and soon Lily learns that Dunkin is bipolar when he quits taking his medicine in hopes of being a better basketball player. They are both able to accept each other’s differences and be their true selves despite how the world sees them.
- Textbook: Middle school gets getting picked on for being different and struggling with growing up and issues with parents: this is a great example of realistic fiction that revolves around the very current topic of transgender children and kids suffering with mental illness. This novel is able to address both topics in a way that helps the reader understand the issue, but also teach the truth about both being transgender and bipolar. Never does the author take on a negative tone in regards to either topic; she even brings to light a background issue for one of Lily’s aggressors: his father reams him after a basketball game and Lily recognizes that the way Vasquez treats her is possibly because he is treated that way by his father, as well as has never been taught not to act that way.
Gephart, D. (2016). Lily and Dunkin. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.
Below is an incredible set of lessons over this novel to help students understand the topics of this book in an educational way.
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