She is clearly highlighted as a bully whose opinions are harmful and wrong. There is one character, Jade, who says some very homophobic and transphobic things over the course of the book, but she is always called out as being in the wrong and those negative sentiments are not expressed by anyone else in the book. He was only a side character, but I loved that he was also given a space to come into his own alongside Liv.

There is also a side character who has hypermobility and sometimes has to walk with a cane. It was just a really nice moment that wasn't given a huge amount of time, but that I thought was great in how it was brought up. The societal enforcement that when trans people present, they have to go ultra feminine or ultra masculine or they are called into question. It is something that I obviously don't have that experience in, because I am cis, but a feeling I have read so many trans people dealing with. It was a nice way of enforcing the fact that Liv feels at least in some ways like he has to behave in a certain way in order to validate his identity. That is, until he learned that there were 'rules' about who could like pink and who couldn't, and so he felt like he had to leave that color behind. Liv talks about how, when he was a kid, he used to love the color pink.

And there was also a moment where Liv talks about socialized gender that I adored. There was a small moment where Liv sort of recognizes male privilege for the first time that was well done. I liked a lot of the little things this book did. I appreciated the honesty that was given to that experience, while also constantly showing how loving and wonderful Liv's family was. There is never any indication that their family is bad or wrong, but the book still had those elements of kids having to deal with other children bullying them for having a family that is not like their own. And more than that, I thought the way that the book dealt with the impact of having two moms was well done. The moms were fabulous and I'm thrilled to see more and more same sex parents in YA and middle grade. I also loved, loved, loved that this was a family with two moms. There are these little jumps in logic that he makes that felt so authentic in terms of the understanding that kids have and how illogical their assumptions can sometimes be. I appreciated his anger but also his way of processing things the way that kids do.

Liv as a character grew and grew on me, and his personality shone through in a lot of really fabulous ways. While initially I had issues with the voice of this novel - the writing wasn't my favorite, sometimes sounding a bit too young or a bit disjointed - I think by the end it really came into its own. Note: I am cis so I cannot comment on how authentic the representation was.

The Pants Project by Cat Clarke