Read Harder with the Trans Rights Readathon

It’s the ombre coloring here that looks like it is only in the center of the image but really works from top to bottom.

It’s the mixture of wooden chairs and plastic/metal chairs.

It’s the way the title is tumbling down along with some of those chairs.

You know this is a story set in a school in some capacity. Every bit of this just comes together nicely. Every time I look at it, my eyes focus in on something else first. —Kelly Jensen, “The Best Book Covers of 2025 So Far“

The story is centered around Yadriel, a trans Latine boy who also happens to be a brujo, even if his family doesn’t believe it yet. When Yadriel tries to prove it to them, and things seem to be going well…he ends up summoning the spirit of the school’s bad boy, Julian.

Julian has no idea how he could have been summoned since he can’t recall his death, but he knows only Yadriel can help him figure that out. And although neither of them likes it, they don’t really have much choice but to collaborate. —Carina Pereira

A nonbinary monk storyteller tells a series of incredible stories in this cycle of novellas from author Nghi Vo. Chih is on the road in search of stories when they run into an elderly woman who was once a handmaiden in the court of an exiled Empress. Rabbit was there for the rise and fall of Empress In-yo, and she has a story to tell unlike any other Chih has heard.

That’s only the start of Chih’s adventures, too, which continue in the sequel, When The Tiger Came Down the Mountain. —Rachel Brittain

I’m having trouble trying to summarize Tourmaline’s accomplishments: TIME 100 Most Influential Person in the World awardee, Guggenheim Fellow, award-winning filmmaker, a permanent art installation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and so much more. Now, she’s written the “first definitive biography” of one of the most prominent figures in LGBTQ history: Marsha P. Johnson. Published simultaneously is a picture book version: One Day in June: A Story Inspired by the Life and Activism of Marsha P. Johnson by Tourmaline and illustrated by Charlot Kristensen. —Danika Ellis

Just as professional women athletes are starting to get a shot at the support and pay they deserve, their world is being rocked by political (AKA transphobic) debates about the inclusion of transgender athletes. Katie Barnes is a journalist who has been reporting on gender in sports and trans athletes for years. Their book Fair Play is an excellent, nuanced exploration of gender and trans identities within the world of sports, from the Olympics to youth leagues and everything in between. Barnes puts today’s hot topics into a historical context and considers the future of gender in sports. They do a fantastic job of shining a light on how nuanced these issues are, despite the fact that both sides try to oversimplify them, and providing thought-provoking suggestions for what a gender-inclusive world of sports might look like. —Susie Dumond

This graphic nonfiction book is the result of interviews with people across the United States about how they describe their own relationship to gender. It includes interviews with cisgender and transgender people, and it demonstrates how no two people have the same conception of their gender. I think this would be a great book to give to someone who sincerely would like to learn more about how gender is so much more complex than a binary. —Danika Ellis

This one is a little heavy, and important. Aster and her family are sharecroppers, considered less than human, aboard the vessel Matilda, a spaceship organized like the antebellum south. Aster, who is a little different, is regularly called a monster or a freak, and her mother’s death by suicide 25 years ago didn’t help matters. And then the ship’s sovereign dies, which uncovers questions about what is actually going on with the ship, along with a possible link to her mother’s death. Trigger warnings for racism and violence in this one, as it is about slavery and the horrors that entailed, so there is violence but it’s just enough to get the point across. —Caitlin Hobbs