Book Review: Too Bright to See*, Kyle Lukoff, published April 20, ’21, 192 pages (Kindle edition). Lexile 790, recommended for grades 5-6, or ages 10-15 (the disparity based on minimum age due to subject matter). Please note: This book is not yet in the Pageturner library and will require student requests for purchases to be made.

Who starts a review by quoting the Author’s Note? Me, apparently.  Kyle Lukoff has described himself as a  “geriatric millennial.” I find him to be an extraordinarily decent man:

“Your friend: “Ooh, that book looks good! What’s it about?” You, maybe: “It’s a ghost story! It’s about a kid named Bug, her uncle—I mean, his uncle—uh, wait, so, their uncle—um.” If you’re having a hard time figuring out how to refer to Bug, or Tommy, and how to talk about his story, that’s okay. I’m not always sure how to talk about it either! When people talk about my childhood, I want them to refer to me as he: “When Kyle was little his family lived in Chicago,” even though when we lived in Chicago everyone still thought I was a girl, even me. Most trans people I know want to be talked about the same way. But Bug doesn’t know that about himself, for most of this book, so it’s also okay that people in the story are calling him “she” and “her.” But if you’ve just finished this book, and want to tell your friend to read it, you probably don’t want to call Bug she/her, because you know better. But referring to Bug as he/him might feel like taking away your friend’s chance to fully experience the story. Here’s what I do: When people ask what my book is about, I say, “It’s about a kid being haunted by the ghost of their dead uncle into figuring out something important!” Bug never uses they/them pronouns, but I hope that if I say it quickly enough, the person I’m talking to won’t really notice. If the person asks for more details I might say that it’s kind of a scary story, and also a sad story but with a mostly happy ending, and that it’s about figuring out how to make friends, being who you are, and letting go of someone you love. If you’re talking about the book with a friend who’s also read it, of course you can call Bug he/him the whole time (and I hope you do). But I also trust you to describe it to someone who hasn’t read it yet, in whatever way feels right to you, so long as you hold the truth of who Bug is in your heart. Thank you for joining him along the way.”

Then, too, he’s also a plagiarist—ah, not to worry, that, too, is all in the same sweet vein—and it doesn’t count if one acknowledges the source, as he does:

“When I was a kid, my dad told me about a story he once wrote. He didn’t remember much, but was proud of the first sentence: “It was strange living in the old house, now that Uncle Roderick was dead.” Thanks, Dad, for a great opener.”

When Lukoff was considering writing this novel, he was on the fence about the subject matter.  Should it be a ghost story, or a middle-school story of transgender transformation? A friend, whom he names with thanks, suggests he combine the two.  In his Acknowledgments, he writes: “My roots go down.” Such a decent man.

So, with his dad’s first sentence, we open to a grieving family of two: Bug, an 11-year old girl whose best friend was her uncle Roddy, and her mom, Sabrina, who designs quirky, sarcastic condolence cards. Bug’s dad had died in an accident early in the marriage. Uncle Roderick had been ill for some time; together, mom and Bug had cared for him without stint to the end.  Mom was his older sister, and Roddy was only 32 when he passed.  Bug didn’t have any friends to speak of, but for her uncle and her mom’s business partner’s daughter, an iffy relationship grown from animosity into a sort of bff status. Bug and her uncle had done everything together.  He'd been her rock—in rural Vermont, where neighbors were few and far between, his companionship and guidance had been essential for her childhood.  Uncle Roddy was flamboyantly gay and absolutely comfortable in his own skin.  He had frequently performed in drag and had a suitcase full of makeup, and more of glittery, colorful costumes and outrageous jewelry.  The three of them had thought his drag name, Anita Life, the best kind of hilarious. Bug had thought up other names in similar form, such as Ivanna Pee. Their two hundred-some odd-years old house had always been haunted; Uncle Roderick often talked with Bug about it, explaining the cold spots as a presence, along with the creaking doors and floors.  Bug had learned to live with the house ghosts (2), whom she felt as obviously as her uncle had. For her part, Mom didn’t believe in ghosts, or anything otherworldly, at all. 

Too many people show up to their home to offer their condolences.  Per tradition, they bring stacks of food.  Mom’s snarky commercial condolence cards line the mantel.  “Mom says that everyone deserves a chance to say goodbye. I wish they could say goodbye somewhere else.”

Soon after, Bug’s bff Mo drops by with bags of stuff.  The girls will be entering middle school when summer ends, and Mo has PLANS for them both. First, she says:

“’Um, also, could you start calling me Moira?’…’Moira’?’ I ask. No one calls her that, ever. ‘We’re starting middle school soon, and Mo is a little-kid name. You might want to do the same, Bug.’ I twitch. I hate the name on my birth certificate and never use it.” Mo—MOIRA—then unloads the bags.  It’s all makeup: pancake, eyeliner, eye shadow, blush, nail polishes galore, with all the fixins’: brushes, makeup remover, eyelash curler—EYELASH CURLER?, thinks Bug.  Who would want curly eyelashes? (I remember this tool as an instrument of torture, myself. Maybe my eyelashes were too short. Nah. Without my glasses, I simply couldn’t see where they were, precisely. I gave up after jabbing my eye a couple of times.) Bug asks:

 “’Is there some law saying that you have to cover your face in gunk before you walk through the front door?” Moira laughs, but I don’t think she thought it was funny. ‘There’s no law. But first impressions matter! I heard that all the girls at Maplewood wear makeup and stuff. Well, not all of them, but most of them. Definitely all the popular ones. You want to make a fresh start, right?’”  Reluctantly, Bug allows Mo—Moira—to perform a makeover on her.  She loves having her hair touched, and she enjoys Moira’s light touch on her face.  That’s comfort.  When she looks in the mirror, the girl reflected there is pretty.  But this face is not hers: “I look good. I look like not me. I like the face in the mirror, but then I imagine leaving the house like this, people looking at me, kids my age, teachers, and suddenly want to throw up.” 

Bug has usually avoided mirrors in general.  The face looking back at her is never quite right—not quite out of focus, simply not right. Uncle Roderick had painted her face in drag and that was fine--it was play, after all.  This makeup felt—not playful. She went to the bathroom and scrubbed with soap and water till her face was red and blotchy.

She is feeling the house ghosts more emphatically.  She has nightmares.  One morning she wakes to find her room upset, with all the drawers opened and her things tossed around.  Who did this? Her mom would think she did, so she cleans up before Mom can see.  This is Uncle Roderick, she thinks. He’s trying to tell me something.  She can hear his voice when she’s in the woods, but not his words. She and Moira have played Ouija (1) before, so now she brings it to Mo’s house.  Whatever it does, Bug can’t fathom it, and neither can Moira.  The instructions insist that two people must be touching the planchette—a new word, she’d always thought of it as that little plastic thingy-- at all times, because they form a protective circle preventing the ghosts from coming through into our world. But as the nightmares worsen, Bug tries by herself. The planchette flies around the board so fast, she hasn’t been able to follow what it says.  It slows down.  It seems to be taking a toll on Uncle Roderick.  A couple of lines are garbled.  Finally, as a last, tough effort, the planchette shows only “B U,” and goes silent.  

She befriends an easy-going boy named Griffin. The first time she visits his house—his family is new to the neighborhood but everybody knows the house by the former family’s name, so they all know where he lives--- she’s wearing a dress she had to borrow from Moira, who’s made her stand in the rain till her jean shorts were drenched.  Griffin invites her in but she backs out, embarrassed.  Every time they meet, Griffin is glad to see her; he makes her feel better in her own skin.  

Bug hunts through Uncle Roderick’s stuff, looking for clues as to what he’s been trying so hard to tell her.  Under his bed, she finds a big box containing literature about LGBTQ (3).  She wonders why he had collected so many pamphlets on the subject.

At a surprise party Moira’s arranged for her 12th birthday, Chloe’s dog barks every time Bug is near.  Chloe remarks that the dog only barks at BOYS. Bug has been wondering if she’ll feel more herself when her first period comes.  She wonders what it will be like to be a woman. Then, at a sleepover, she dreams that she and Uncle Roderick are at a hair salon. He wields clippers and asks if she’s ready, and she is. The next morning, Bug awakens to Moira’s screams. Hair laying like so many snakes is all over the bathroom floor.  Bug feels the soft bristles on her head and feels, THIS is good.  This fits. The girls all seem to agree. Even Moira opines it’s a good look for Bug.

“I straighten up. Drop my palm. And slowly look into my own eyes. And it’s me. Just me. There he is, I think. Then I stop thinking, for just a second, and feel. I see a boy in the mirror. I see myself in the mirror. Every other time I’ve looked in a mirror, I’ve seen a girl, and not seen myself. I’ve always thought it was a ghost. Or a trick. But there he is. There I am. And I realize. This is what Uncle Roderick wanted me to know. This is what he was trying to tell me. This is why he was holding on to those papers under his bed. He was waiting for me to be ready. He knew.”

Bug’s mom is fully on board.  She tells Bug how Uncle Roderick had come out to their birth family; he’d been accepted right away.  His stepdad had even brought out some cider to celebrate! But of course, Mom still doesn’t buy into the ghosts bit.  She doesn’t believe for a minute that it was Uncle Roderick who revealed Bug’s true nature.  Nevertheless, she orchestrates everything to help Bug’s transition.  They set up an appointment with Bug’s new principal. Mrs. Campbell is fully supportive and tells them protocols are already in place for Bug, even to five bathrooms, including singular ones, Bug is free to choose.  He asks about bullying and learns all the school’s adults have been trained for that, too.  He can breathe.

When Moira learns Bug’s a boy, she immediately says now he’ll “fit right in” and be able to make friends.  Bug rages because this seems a shallow response, but Moira opens up about her own insecurities, and about being jealous of Bug’s grades, and a lot more. 

“I wonder what our friendship would have looked like if I had been a boy all along. I mean, if everyone had known I was a boy. I think that was the friendship we were always meant to have, and I can tell Moira feels it too. I have a sudden flash of sympathy for her, being stuck hanging out with a mopey grump that never wanted to do anything she thought was fun, always acting like something was wrong no matter what she did. I’ll make it up to her.”

Money’s been tight, there’s been no summer camp away this year because mom’s new condolence cards aren’t selling well. Still, Moira takes Bug shopping for new clothes:

“Moira is helping me pick from the boys’ section instead of the girls’, it’s actually fun. We make a pile of different T-shirts in soft fabrics with interesting patterns and funny jokes. And jeans! I love boy jeans. They have pockets. And they aren’t so tight. I take an armload into the boys’ fitting room and no one blinks an eye. I spend so much time admiring myself in the mirror that Moira starts to yell at me from outside. “Come on! I wanna see what you look like! Let me help you pick outfits!” So I run back and forth showing her different shirts and jeans. Like going-to-the-mall scenes in books or movies, which I’d always skip over because they seemed boring. This isn’t boring. We take almost everything, including one dark pink shirt, and a purple one with yellow flowers. I mean, they’re from the boys’ section, right? I never wanted to wear pink or purple before, but it’s different now that people won’t look at me and see a girl in a pink shirt. Mom pays for everything, and I have a moment of panic—can we afford all this? But she seems relaxed about it, so I decide to trust her. We’ve already survived two huge changes, and we’ll make it through anything else that comes our way.”

Mom finally tells her that Bug’s inspired an entire new line of cards that are selling like hotcakes: LGBTQ cards! She tells Bug he’s saved their house from sale. Everybody at school is totally fine with Bug, too.  He DOES make new friends, and Griffin is right there, too, along with Moira and the girls he’d met through the summer, at Moira’s:

“And I’m there with them, not hovering around or above, watching silently. Not a ghost, or a character in a book. Just there, as my whole self. I’ve suddenly made a whole bunch of new friends, who just happen to be people I’ve known forever. But, in some ways, we’ve only just met each other.”

But.  Mom comes to Bug, flummoxed and deeply perturbed:

“’Sweetie, did you put this here?’ Her voice is shaky. ‘No, what is it?’ I get a closer look and realize it’s a heart locket on a gold chain. I’ve never seen it before. ‘This was . . . this was something Roddy gave to me. After your father died.’ She clicks it open and carefully places it in my palm. There’s a tiny photograph inside, black-and-white, a younger version of my mom and a man with my nose, my chin. Her head is on his shoulder and he’s beaming like he’s the luckiest man on earth. ‘It hurt too much to look at all the time, so I kept it in his room. In a jewelry box, on the top shelf of his closet. But it was sitting on my pillow. Did you . . . did you find it?’”

Maybe Sabrina has finally acknowledged ghosts--exist.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

* Winner of the Newbery Medal in 2022, also the Stonewall award, and a National Book Award Finalist. “Kyle Lukoff writes books for kids and other people. Before becoming a full-time writer, Kyle worked at five bookstores, in four libraries, for three schools.” His site is at: http://www.kylelukoff.com/

(1)  “The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board

“Tool of the devil, harmless family game—or fascinating glimpse into the non-conscious mind?

“In February, 1891, the first few advertisements started appearing in papers: “Ouija, the Wonderful Talking Board,” boomed a Pittsburgh toy and novelty shop, describing a magical device that answered questions “about the past, present and future with marvelous accuracy” and promised “never-failing amusement and recreation for all the classes,” a link “between the known and unknown, the material and immaterial.” Another advertisement in a New York newspaper declared it “interesting and mysterious” and testified, “as Proven at Patent Office before it was allowed. Price, $1.50.”

“This mysterious talking board was basically what’s sold in board game aisles today: A flat board with the letters of the alphabet arrayed in two semi-circles above the numbers 0 through 9; the words “yes” and “no” in the uppermost corners, “goodbye” at the bottom; accompanied by a “planchette,” a teardrop-shaped device, usually with a small window in the body, used to maneuver about the board. The idea was that two or more people would sit around the board, place their finger tips on the planchette, pose a question, and watch, dumbfounded, as the planchette moved from letter to letter, spelling out the answers seemingly of its own accord. The biggest difference is in the materials; the board is now usually cardboard, rather than wood, and the planchette is plastic.” Excerpt: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/

(2) HOW WE PERCEIVE GHOSTS IS A SCIENTIFIC PHENOMENON--AND A FASCINATING READ: “The science of ghosts: Here’s what may explain why some people see, hear or feel a spooky presence

“…[E] equipment sometimes can capture noise, images or other signals that people don’t expect. Ghosts are the least likely of many possible explanations. Not only are ghosts supposed to be able to do things that science says are impossible, such as turn invisible or pass through walls, but also scientists using reliable research methods have found zero evidence that ghosts exist. What scientists have discovered, though, are lots of reasons why people might feel they have had ghostly encounters. What their data show is that you can’t always trust your eyes, ears or brain.

“Sleep paralysis happens when the brain messes up the process of falling asleep or waking. Usually, you only start dreaming after you’re fully asleep. And you stop dreaming before you waken. Sleep paralysis “is like dreaming with your eyes open,” explains Baland Jalal. A neuroscientist, he studies sleep paralysis at the University of Cambridge in England. He says this is why it happens: Our most vivid, lifelike dreams happen during a certain stage of sleep. It’s called rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep. In this stage, your eyes dart around under their closed lids. Though your eyes move, the rest of your body can’t. It’s paralyzed. Most likely, that’s to prevent people from acting out their dreams. (That could get dangerous! Imagine flailing your arms and legs as you play dream basketball, only to whack your knuckles on the wall and tumble to the floor.)

“Your brain usually turns this paralysis off before you wake up. But in sleep paralysis, you wake up while it’s still happening.

“You don’t have to experience sleep paralysis to sense things that aren’t there. Have you ever felt your phone buzz, then checked to find there was no message? Have you heard someone calling your name when no one was there? Have you ever seen a face or figure in a dark shadow?

These misperceptions also count as hallucinations, says David Smailes. He’s a psychologist in England at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He thinks that just about everyone has such experiences. Most of us just ignore them. But some may turn to ghosts as the explanation.

“The brain has a tough job. Information from the world bombards you as a mixed-up jumble of signals. The eyes take in color. The ears take in sounds. The skin senses pressure. The brain works to make sense of this mess. This is called bottom-up processing. And the brain is very good at it. It’s so good that it sometimes finds meaning in meaningless things. This is known as pareidolia (Pear-eye-DOH-lee-ah). You experience it whenever you stare at clouds and see rabbits, ships or faces. Or gaze at the moon and see a face.

Can you see the three faces in this image? [Go to the site to see the image.] Most people can easily find them. Most people also realize that they aren’t real faces. They are an example of pareidolia. 

The brain also does top-down processing. It adds information to your perception of the world. Most of the time, there is way too much stuff coming in through the senses. Paying attention to all of it would overwhelm you. So your brain picks out the most important parts. And then it fills in the rest. “The vast majority of perception is the brain filling in the gaps,” explains Smailes. What you see right now isn’t what’s actually out there in the world. It’s a picture your brain painted for you based on signals captured by your eyes. The same goes for your other senses. Most of the time, this picture is accurate. But sometimes, the brain adds things that aren’t there.

For example, when you mishear the lyrics in a song, your brain filled in a meaning that wasn’t there. (And it will most likely continue to mishear those words even after you learn the right ones.)”  [For your reviewer, it’s “there’s a bathroom on the right” when the actual lyrics are, “there’s a bad moon on the rise!].  See: https://www.snexplores.org/article/science-ghosts

(3)   ABOUT TRANSGENDER AND LGBTQ: It’s amazing how resilient and accepting most kids are on this topic.  Planned Parenthood provides some great information for all of us: “Transgender and Nonbinary Identities

What do I need to know about sexual health as a trans or nonbinary person? 

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