Alice Austen Lived Here by Alex Gino - Review

I picked this up in Portal bookshop in York, which is a queer bookshop that also sells badges and fun stuff like that, and has a cafe upstairs and plenty of events happening - it's a really cool place to go. I visited in June with my friend Lucinda. I bought just this book, and picked it up soon after. I love Alex Gino and would love to have read everything they write, so I was glad to buy this. 

It's about a non binary kid called Sam who lives in New York with their mother and father I think. They are close friends with a queer family who live on a lower floor in their building - a woman, her non binary partner, and their baby. Sam also walks the dog of someone in the building, I don't remember her name but I loved her. From their bedroom window, Sam can see the Statue of Liberty and it's a statue that means a lot to them. Their best friend, TJ, is also non binary. They have a busy family that Sam is sometimes jealous of. 

At school, the kids get given an assignment to enter a competition. They have to write a report about who there should be a new statue of in their home borough of Staten Island. Some kids write about Henry Hudson - been done, coloniser, never even came to the area, Sam and TJ are bored of that one - and others write about Alexander Hamilton because one of them is vaguely related to him, which she shoehorns into every conversation haha. Sam and TJ don't know who to write about but eventually learn about Alice Austen, who was a photographer. She lived with a woman for decades and took quite frank photos of herself and her friends. I hadn't ever heard of her so it was interesting to learn more about her as Sam and TJ did too. 

I liked the book a lot and I think for a middle grade audience it was perfect. It explained a lot of things about queer identity and I liked how Sam came more to terms with themself and their place in the community. For me personally it was a bit so so, but I understand I am not the target audience and I think it would hit different with them. I will say that I didn't feel a particular emotional connection with Sam unlike in Melissa or Rick, which perhaps let it down a bit for me. But in all, a good book! 

As an aside but relevant to this post - I reviewed a queer picture book called Princess Pete for Global Comment, where I write occasionally. I wrote about why LGBTQIA+ books are essential for all kids, under the umbrella or not. You can read it here.