Initially published in 2015, George is a children's novel featuring a main character who is a transgender girl. In 2021, the author of the novel, Alex Gino, announced that it would be published under the new title Melissa beginning in April of 2022. The protagonist of the novel is fourth-grader Melissa, who is bullied at school and seen as a boy named George by most of her classmates. Her struggles expressing her gender identity lead to an internal crisis, but she hopes that she is able to prove to the world that she is truly a girl by playing Charlotte in her school's rendition of Charlotte's Web.
Alex Gino states that they wrote George because they had never had access to a story like it when they were younger. They began work on George in 2003, and won the Stonewall Book Award for the novel in 2016. Gino has since released children's novel You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P!, which also gained popularity. George is one of the most banned children's books, and has stimulated controversy over its coverage of LGBTQ+ related topics.
