I read this book because of its unusual protagonist: J identifies himself as a boy mistakenly born into a girl's body. Though he has always known this on some level (and resisted the outside world's desire to misinterpret him as a lesbian), his world opens up when at age 17 he discoveres the concept of transgender, and that there is hormone therapy and a whole community of people experiencing the same thing. He becomes determined to get a testosterone shot, even though it requires parental permsission and seeing a therapist. He enrolls in a more GLBT-friendly school and sets about disclosing himself to his friend Melissa (whose side story is a good one as well -- she is a dancer and a cutter), his parents, and even his new girlfriend Blue. 
 This was a hard book to put down! I really got attached to J; his voice rang true in a very simple, take-things-as-they-are kind of way. I was reminded of when I read teen books when *I* was a teen, and took them at face value, without stopping to evaluate pacing, writing style, and characterization. There was just something quiet and effortless about the author's treatment of this under-represented subject and winning protagonist. 
 Includes an author's note and list of resources. 
 Favorite quotes: 
 "It was the only reason J could appreciate being born female: girls like Melissa -- well, actually, only Melissa -- let J in on their secrets, their biggest plans, their most frightened, sad places. Melissa let J see how smart she was. Other girls, of course, rejected J, saw only the most superficial aspects of him -- the way he was so butch and tough-looking -- and they'd run away, thinking he was a freak or a dyke or both. Something predatory, something hard and impenetrable. They'd never know, as Melissa knew, that J was a photographer, that he loved the interplay of light and dark and finding the wavering balance between them. They'd never know how gentle J was, and how scared, how he wanted to do the right thing but often couldn't. They'd never know how confusion and cruelty change people, make them hard -- the way the deepest cuts make the toughest scabs." 
 "How can I explain myself to you if I can't explain myself to me?" 
 "Madison was right, [the paintings] were all blue, but J hadn't known there could be so many shades. There were night blues and day blues, cruel-looking blues, the blues of water, and the blues of sun-beaten wood porches." 
 "The hormones made them think somewhat magically, because they knew they were changing themselves..." 
 "Art is the lie that tells the truth." --Picasso 
 "J tumbled down a few stairs inside himself." 
 "Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional." --J's swim coach 
 "J had decided to view his classes, and his classmates, as an anthropological study. He would be the neutral, silent monitor sent to observe a strange planet of noisy misfits." 
 "For Manny, J was just a blank wall for him to splat his rage against and see what it looked like hanging there." 
 "The support group wasn't like findng a home, exactly, as Philip had espoused, but more of a garage next to the home -- somewhere kind of offset and funky, where you wanted to hang out and explore what was inside." 
 "J felt as if he were at the edge of one of his construction sites, staring at the deep hole in the earth that always came before the building. People forgot about the excavation once the building went up, once the shiny windows and elevators and rooftop terraces made the edifice seem so permanent, so entitled to its height and stature. But beneath the building was still the deep cut in the land that allowed for its growth..." 
 "What all of these real people share with J, and what they have taught me, are the ways that anger and pain implode when one's internal reality collides with an often unforgiving outside world." --from the Author's Note 
 "when we're lost in the madness, kindness is wisdom" --from the Acknowledgements