A Year in Reading: James Frankie Thomas
I started off the year reading The Kingdom of Sand by Andrew Holleran. I’d put it on my gift wish list for my family Secret Santa, and I was psyched to receive it. I spent those dark January evenings reading it in my local Starbucks and eavesdropping on men at other tables and feeling gorgeously melancholy about gay male loneliness. When I got to the end, I closed the book and stared into space fantasizing about becoming Andrew Holleran’s boyfriend. I would make sure that he (and his characters) would never feel lonely again.
Later in January, while staving off gay male loneliness, I caught strep. For a week I was mostly bedridden and it hurt my eyes, a children’s book author. First I read , his Newbery-winning middle grade novel, and it instantly became my new favorite trans coming-out novel in any genre; I’m surprised it doesn’t get talked about more often in the context of trans lit, but people can be so snobby about children’s lit. Then I read his second middle grade novel, , which is sunnier and satirical in tone. I loved that one too.
