🌈 It’s #TransYouthDay Rainbow Readers! In 2017, Trans Lifeline declared December 28th as Trans Youth Day: an annual holiday to celebrate trans youth, raise awareness and honor the memory of Leelah. To celebrate we have 28 books that feature trans youth from children’s books, middle grade to young adult books. Trans kids deserve to see their stories and celebrate themselves at all ages! 

What’s your favorite trans book? Drop us the title and author in the comments! Authors please feel free to self-promote your trans books in the comments!

Note: Because children’s books typically have size deviations compared to middle grade and YA, we took some creative liberties with the covers to make these graphics visually appealing. All full titles and author names will be in the comments. 

Books listed above their respective graphics.

ID: A post of eight slides. All slides have the background of a horizontal transgender Pride flag. It has five stripes: blue, pink, white, pink, blue. An opaque white square with a thin outline is overlaid. The first slide says “28 trans books for trans youth day”. The 28 is in the colors of the trans flag and the words alternate to resemble a trans flag. Slides 2-8 have four book covers in two rows of two each. End ID.

Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Callender

Dear Mothman by Robin Gow

I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel & Jazz Jennings

Ander & Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa

Wandering Son by Shimura Takako

Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White 

The Pants Project by Cat Clarke

Salt the Water by Candice Iloh

My Rainbow by Trinity & DeShanna Neal

Obie is Man Enough by Schuyler Bailar

Just Happy to be Here by Naomi Kanakia

Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart

The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimmons

Venom & Vow by Anna-Marie McLemore & Elliott McLemore

Ciel by Sophie Labelle

Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Ez Symes-Smith

The Queer Girl is Going to be Okay by Dale Walls

From the stars in the sky to the fish in the sea by Kai Cheng Thom

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff

Zenobia July by Lisa Bunker

What Makes You Beautiful by Bridget Liang

Calvin by J.R. & Vanessa Ford

Joy, to the World by Kai Shappley & Lisa Bunker

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa

Kapaemahu by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, and Joe Wilson

The Mutantsitters Club by SJ Whitby 

part 2 of the 2023 version of this post: young adult books!

part 1: middle grade books | part 3: adult books

this is a very incomplete list, as these are only books I've read and enjoyed. not all books are going to be for all readers, so I'd recommend looking up synopses and content warnings. feel free to message me with any questions about specific representation!

list of books under the cut ⬇️

TOR WRAPPED 2023

Books for every Spotify Wrapped listener class! 

VAMPIRE

HYPNOTIST

ALCHEMIST

SHAPESHIFTER

FANATIC

TIME TRAVELER

MASTERMIND

COLLECTOR

Aro & Ace books: DRAGONS

See also: The Siren the Song and the Spy, The Grimrose Girls, Adrift In Starlight (include dragons, though not as significantly)

#aspec books / aspec database

vellichorblues on Instagram

I have not read all these books nor do I recommend all of the ones I have read

YA contemporary books with (allo)ace girls

#aspec books / aspec database

ace books ace books we got 'em

Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria

Beyond the Black Door by A.M. Strickland

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

What We Devour by Linsey Miller

The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

This Dark Descent by Kalyn Josephson

The Kindred by Alechia Dow

The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath

The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray by Christine Calella

Silver in the Mist by Emily Victoria

Not Your Backup by C.B. Lee

The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko

The Circus Infinite by Khan Wong

Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim

Love Letters for Joy by Melissa See

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun

Aces Wild by Amanda Dewitt

I Am Ace by Cody Daigle-Orians

ACE by Angela Chen

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality by Sherronda J Brown

Being Ace ed by Madeline Dyer

public libraries in the usa offering free digital library cards to people not in their areas (as of october 2023):

these cards (part of the books unbanned initiative) get you access to each library's complete libby/overdrive collection (unless otherwise mentioned), no hoopla/kanopy/physical copies included.

ebook collections are expensive to maintain (many american libraries have annual fees for non-residents because of this) but because of an uptick in book banning (particularly brutal in mississippi last summer) larger libraries have opened their doors more, which is very kind of them!

i've used my seattle card for the last several months and their libby collection has about three times the books that my local library does, which is wonderful for accessing more niche titles or skipping a waiting list. would love to hear of similar ebook initiatives internationally!

i use library extension (firefox/safari/chrome compatible) to check all my collections (+ the internet archive) at once, works for several different countries highly recommend it.

spotify seems to be offering 15hrs/month of audiobook listening to premium subscribers and while that does seem useful if you're already paying and are after a new release with a long library waitlist, libraries are better for everything else.

Hey friendly reminder from your local librarian to please vet your school board candidates (if any) this election season. This is where you get to make a wonderful and immediate impact to protect the right of school-aged kids’ freedom to read, keep your schools’ libraries funded and open, and minimize harm done to marginalized students and teachers.

Voting in election years that aren’t presidential is vital.

Local & county organizers often have resource pages where they endorse candidates. In my state, the school board is non-partisan, but candidates can still accept endorsements, which makes it easier to find people whose values align with mine.

If you can vote, please do so.

about to drop literally the sickest insider knowledge you will ever receive pls use it responsibly:

are you a teenager? do you wish you had the space & resources & organization to do a thing, whether that's an anime club or a movie night or a big craft workshop or creative writing group or literally whatever? would you like to do your thing totally for free? yes?

okay, then bring it up to a librarian

seriously, teenagers are the absolute hardest group to engage at most libraries & we'll often organize programs that absolutely no one will show up to & it sucks. if you go up to a public librarian & say "hey, some friends & i want to do this thing. does that sound like a feasible teen program for the library?" most people will move heaven & earth to pull it off for you because we know there's an interest in our community. we will go balls to the freaking wall to make it happen

do you want a cosplay contest? a video game tournament? a free escape room? bring it up to the library. it's not a burden or an annoyance at all. it'll be like christmas came early for us

Seeing a steady rise of people using the library as we carry through summer break, so here's a quick thread from a staff member on little things you can do (for free!) to make life easier on staff. Let's go!

Happy International Non-Binary People's Day!!

Here are some books I found with non binary bi MCs to celebrate the occasion 💖

Books listed

💕I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver 💕 Jude Saves the World by Ronnie Riley 💕 Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco 💕 Lark and Kasim Start a Revolution by Kacen Callender 💕 The Oracle Stone by Talli L. Morgan 💕 The Savior's Rise by Talli L. Morgan 💕 The Scandalous Letters of V and J by Felicia Davin 💕 The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta

If any of y’all didn’t know, there’s a free online library, aka

https://openlibrary.org/

and I found like, twelve ebooks I’ve been wanting to read on there, and blasted through like three of them during the course of a boring-ass shift.

Guy there are books on magic on there.

There’s books on EVERYTHING there!

Wouldn’t this be bad for authors though? or is this like a normal library where they get /some/ money?

It’s like a normal library. Libraries can upload ebooks there and let people check them out through openlibrary if you have an openlibrary account, or it can point you to nearby libraries that have physical copies of the book for you to go and check out. If you check out books via openlibrary it counts towards the count of books checked out from the library that uploaded the ebook, and they can use it in their reporting and funding and stuff.

There’s like 150 libraries partnered with openlibrary so far.

They also have copies that you can check out if you are print-disabled.

You can also ‘sponsor a book’, which means you pay the cost of the ebook you want openlibrary to acquire, and then they can add it to their collection and let people check it out.

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL26576A/Tamora_Pierce

I sure did!

And click on a title even if it says ‘no ebook available’ and scroll down, ‘cause sometimes that just means “all of the copies of ebooks are checked out right now but you can get on the waitlist when it’s back in”

This is part of the Internet Archive! I’ve posted about this before. Please go, it’s amazing. 

signal boosting because BOOKS

Oh!

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (b. 24 July 1802)

*chanting in the style of the Bill Nye the Science Guy intro*: books! books! books! books!

Here are some of our recs for disability pride month!

if anyone’s looking for more, I keep a disabled characters tag on this blog that has plenty of LGBT+ books in it too :) they should be marked as such but if not, just ask ^.^ my personal recs would be anything by Marieke Nijkamp, Corinne Duyvis, Anna-Marie McLemore, and novels, The Degenerates by J Albert Mann and Make You Mine This Christmas by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

2023 reads // twitter thread

Love Letters For Joy