66 pages • 2 hours read
Alex GinoGeorge
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaChapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Dinner at Arnie’s”
At home, Mom worries about George, thinking she is gay and will be at the mercy of bullies like Jeff. When George announces she is a girl, Mom is in disbelief and announces that the family will go to Arnie’s All-You-Can-Eat Buffet as a distraction. But George feels that “nothing—certainly not a buffet dinner—could help the fact that Mom didn’t see her” (129).
When Kelly calls George on the phone, she sees that the play means “a lot” to George, who thinks that if her Mom saw her in it, she would realize that she was a girl (132). Kelly hatches a secret plan to give George the role of Charlotte in the second performance.
Later at Arnie’s, when Mom is away at the buffet table, Scott asks George about Mom’s gloomy state of mind. He guesses that George told her that she was gay and affirms that he will be supportive of George if that is the case. George says, “I told her I think I’m a girl” (139). Scott accepts George’s truth and asks if she wants to have an operation to remove her penis. When George replies that she might, Scott says that this is “weird. But it kinda makes sense” because George is no typical boy (141).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Transformations”
George takes the role of Charlotte in the second performance and is both brilliant and convincing. The teachers notice what George has done but allow the performance to continue. At the end, George is so moved by the ability to completely be herself on stage that “she cried in sadness and joy” (157). The audience has a mixed reaction, including smiles, surprised faces, and grimaces of “disgust” (159). George does not see her mom at first, but then Mom finally appears with a “stern face” that makes George feel “as if she were frozen in place” (159). Mom does not know what to make of “seeing my son onstage, and nearly everyone in the audience thought he was a girl” (159). Principal Maldonado praises George to her mom and whispers that her door is always open if George needs to talk to anyone. At home, Mom and George eat in silence, before George retreats to her room and “twirled around and around like a spider dancing on a web” (162).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Invitations”
At school the next day, Kelly announces her plan to take George to the faraway Bronx Zoo with her Uncle Bill. There, George can practice being the girl she is. George is thrilled with the plan and announces that Kelly can call her by her “private name,” Melissa (168).
Chapter 12 Summary: “Melissa Goes to the Zoo”
At Kelly’s, George tries on girlish skirts and tops before going to the zoo. George admires her reflection: “She looked into the mirror and gasped. Melissa gasped back at her” (181). Kelly supplies makeup, and Melissa knows, from her magazine reading, just how to apply it and which shades will suit them both. Once she’s dressed, Melissa is bothered by her boys’ underpants, and Kelly immediately offers her a pair of her own “light-pink underwear covered in tiny red hearts” (187).
Uncle Bill accepts that he is going to the zoo with “two fine young women” and Melissa has a fun day out, dressed like a girl (189). Kelly escorts Melissa to the girls’ bathroom, where she goes into a stall and “sat, and peed, just like a girl,” a private victory that she does not even share with Kelly (193). When Kelly takes photos of the two of them, there is no need to pose Melissa because she already looks “perfect” (195). Melissa considers it has been “the best week of her life […] so far” (195).
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
In the final chapters of the book, George actively performs her real identity through roles that feel authentic to her: first, that of Charlotte, in Charlotte’s Web; then that of Melissa, the girl she knows she secretly is when she looks into the mirror. However, it is harder to get her mom to accept her for who she is.
George feels wholly feminine and herself playing Charlotte, and at the end of the performance, does “the only thing that made any sense” and curtsies (158). Though she has “no skirt to hold daintily,” she feels “graceful” and clings “onto the moment as tightly as she could, even when the curtains were pulled shut” (158).
Similarly, being Melissa and wearing a skirt, girls’ underpants, and make up, feels both exhilarating and natural. This is evident at the zoo, when she catches sight of “her reflection in the glass in front of a display of exotic, glowing jellyfish” and looked “at a girl” (191). The sight is as new and surprising as the exotic marine display, but also right to her.
Kelly, who has read up on transgender rights and concerns, is fully supportive of George’s ambitions to express her true feminine nature. She is the one who pushes George to take the role of Charlotte after Ms. Udell denies her—and who encourages her to go to the zoo as Melissa. Without needing to be told, she drags Melissa to the girls’ bathroom with her and treats her fully as the girl she is.
Mom, on the other hand, takes a while to adjust to George’s expression of her true nature. She does not know what to make of an audience thinking she has a talented daughter, rather than a talented son. Her final sign of approval, leaving the bag of magazines on George’s bed, is less triumphant than accepting. Gino thus gives a realistic portrayal of a transgender child’s coming out in a world that is changing but still prejudiced. Interestingly, the staff at George’s school also undergo an evolution with regard to creating a safe space for transgender children. Following George’s interpretation of Charlotte, Ms. Udell goes over with a “scowl” (155) on her face to reproach her, but Principal Maldonado stops her colleague, allowing the play to continue. She praises George as a talented “kid” and “star” (160), using tactful, gender-neutral words that offend neither George’s sensibilities nor her mother’s (161).
While the novel ends with Melissa having a wonderful day at the zoo and the promise that the good times will continue, there are still unresolved issues, such as whether Melissa will have surgery to stop her body turning into a man’s, or whether Mom will let her dress like a girl when she goes to school. There are challenges to be worked out, but she has broken the first one, of appearing as her true self.
