The Ship We Built, by Lexie Bean

     A new book, and the first from author Bean, a self-described transgender writer and multimedia artist. The Ship We Built is a really important story, a sort of autobiography, but written as a fiction book. The book tells about a year in the life of Rowan, who was born Ellie, as they navigate their fifth grade school year trying to figure out who they are, and how to be that person in a world surrounded by unsupportive family, school mates, and even more dangerous areas of life such as sexual abuse. As Ellie navigates their transition in their own mind to Rowan, they use a series of letters, written to anyone who might find and read them, as a "ship" to communicate who they are and their journey of becoming. Each letter is tied to a balloon and sent into the sky, in the hopes that a friend will be made along the way, a desperately needed friend when they seem so hard to find.

     The story is important because there are not many books out there about transgender kids, or adults for that matter, and these voices need to be available for all of us to begin to understand and know. However, Bean has landed on one method of delivering the story, via the letter, and does not add to that in any way, keeping the tone of the story very constant, as well as the narration. What that means for you, the reader, is that a needed story loses a lot of its power in the monotony of the delivery. In other words, because the entire story is told in letters, and only from Ellie/Rowan, the themes explored in the book are pretty one-dimensional. They fall a little flat. I got bored with the story - not the storyline itself, but with the sameness of the delivery throughout. 

I think Bean has done a nice job of introducing us to transgender teens and what that means in today's world. I think future books by this author might get wider in their scope, and thus be better stories. I give Ship 4 paws, mostly for being so brave in offering us Rowan as a 10-year-old boy born a girl, something that probably exists more than we know in those around us. But outside of this needed theme, Bean still has some writing work to do to really take their story to another, better, level.