Williams, David. The Boy in the Dress. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. Razorbill, 2009. 9781595142993 Ages 8-11
Twelve-year-old Dennis is a star soccer player coming to terms with the fact that he enjoys wearing dresses. He lives with his gruff dad and older brother, neither of whom understand or accept his fascination with Vogue magazine. Dennis finds a friend and soul mate in Lisa, an older girl at his school who also loves fashion. She encourages Dennis to try on her dresses, something he finds exhilarating and freeing, and then to play at passing as a girl. After Dennis successfully develops a drag persona as Denise, a French foreign student living with Lisa’s family, he even dares to go to school wearing a dress, where no one recognizes him as Dennis until his wig falls off during an impromptu soccer game he can’t resist jumping into. Williams uses stock characters and slapstick humor, but he is surprisingly gentle and respectful in his treatment of Dennis. And while Dennis may be ridiculed by some of his classmates, he never becomes the butt of the author’s jokes. —KT Horning