Beautiful Music for Ugly Children [Paperback]

Kirstin Cronn-Mills (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 2012

"This is Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, on community radio 90.3, KZUK. I’m Gabe. Welcome to my show."

My birth name is Elizabeth, but I’m a guy. Gabe. My parents think I’ve gone crazy and the rest of the world is happy to agree with them, but I know I’m right. I’ve been a boy my whole life.

When you think about it, I’m like a record. Elizabeth is my A side, the song everybody knows, and Gabe is my B side—not heard as often, but just as good.

It’s time to let my B side play.

Praise:
“Every so often a book comes along that is so sharp, so moving, so real, and so good, you want to press it into everyone’s hands and say, Read this! READ THIS!”—Courtney Summers, author of Cracked Up to Be and This is Not a Test

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Elizabeth Williams knows he has always been a guy, and if he can only get through graduation in a few weeks, he can begin his new life as Gabe. He is transitioning, but his family refuses to acknowledge him, and his classmates bully him. The only person who supports him is his BFF, Paige, and, predictably, he has a crush on her but can't take a chance on ruining their friendship. Gabe is a music geek, and his ultra-cool, grandfatherly neighbor John, a former DJ, lands him a community radio show, Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. Gabe DJs as himself, and after working up the courage to tell John, who is fine with him being a "triangle," they put together a show about A sides and B sides, which becomes popular with the Ugly Children Brigade fan club and a running theme in the book. But when Gabe has a date with one of his fans, and she recognizes him as Liz, word spreads and some fans drop out of the Facebook club, while others get violent. When John is critically hurt defending Gabe at an Ugly Children event, the offenders are arrested, John's long-lost daughter shows up, Gabe's parents have a change of heart, and Paige and Gabe may have a chance together. While this transgender coming-of-age tale wraps up a bit too quickly, the quirky relationship between Gabe and John and their shared music obsession elevates this story above the average problem novel.-Betty S. Evans, Missouri State University, Springfieldα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About the Author

Kirstin Cronn-Mills is the author of Minnesota Book Award finalist The Sky Always Hears Me And the Hills Don’t Mind and Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. Cronn-Mills received her doctorate degree from Iowa State University and currently teaches in North Mankato, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband and son.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Age Range: 12 and up
  
• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Flux; Original edition (October 8, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738732516
• ISBN-13: 978-0738732510
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

According to geographers, the American West begins at the 100th longitudinal meridian. Thanks to the fact that this meridian is the main street of her hometown in Nebraska, Kirstin Cronn-Mills grew up six blocks east of the West. Yes, there were cowboys around.

Kirstin is a self-proclaimed word nerd. She learned to read when she was three (according to her mother) and she hasn't stopped since. Her grandmother and her father passed on their love of language to her, and that love became a love affair when she started writing poems in the sixth grade. She still writes poems, but now she focuses on young adult novels. She's pretty sure that teenagers are the funniest, smartest, coolest people on the planet.

In 1992 Kirstin moved from Nebraska to southern Minnesota, where she lives now. She writes a lot, reads as much as she can, teaches at a two-year college, and goofs around with her son, Shae, and her husband, Dan. Her first novel, The Sky Always Hears Me and The Hills Don't Mind (Flux), was a 2010 Minnesota Book Award finalist in Young People's Literature. A short story epilogue to Sky, "The First Time I Got Stranded in the Big Empty," appears in the e-anthology The First Time (Verday and Stapleton, 2011). She also published a middle-grade science book in 2009: Collapse! The Science of Structural Engineering Failures (Compass Point Books). Her short story "Header" will appear on the Young Adult Review Network (YARN) website sometime in the fall of 2012, and a nonfiction book about the lives of transgendered Americans will appear from Lerner in 2014

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Her name was Donna November 30, 2012

By Eric Shoars

Format:Paperback

Admittedly, a book in this genre would not be something in my reading wheelhouse. However, the title and trailer for the book sparked my curiosity so I picked up Beautiful Music for Ugly Children and was pulled into the story. There are ways I identified with Gabe - I began my radio career at age 16 - and have loved music and albums in particular all my life. As I read on though, something that surprised me was being reminded of someone who I met in college over 20 years ago. Her name was Donna. Donna was a gorgeous blonde who had a model's body. The guys - including me - drooled over her. Donna and I were in the same classes one year and developed a bit of a friendship. One day between classes Donna confided in me, admitting that she felt like a man trapped in a woman's body. As a college-aged man, my initial internal reaction was to think what a shame it was to have such a terrific body and not even want it. My second internal reaction was to feel sadness for someone who feels trapped, who feels inauthentic in the body she was born with. I appreciated Donna confiding in me and we remained friends until our time in college ended and we went our separate career directions. I had forgotten about Donna until reading Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. I have thought of Donna often since then.

I have a greater appreciation for the courage Donna showed me back in the 80s when such an admission would have been looked upon even less favorably than it is today. In reading Gabe's struggles with his identity and how he was trying to be his authentic self, not the self others ascribed to him, I thought of Donna more. All these years later I have a sense of the profound inner conflict she faced. Kirstin Cronn-Mills' portrayal of Gabe's struggle for his place in the world, for acceptance by those who knew him well and those who knew him not all at, is compelling. Oftentimes, I would finish a section, put the book down, and sit and ponder what I'd just read, wondering how many people there are out there like Gabe and Donna who I come in contact with and don't even know how much they're hurting, being trapped in inauthentic identities. It's more than a little sobering.

In an era of tolerance, we are tolerant of some behavior and lifestyles while not being tolerant and accepting of the Gabes and Donnas of the world. I absolutely LOVED Kirstin Cronn-Mills' use of the record metaphor and of people having a "B" side. We all have "B" sides and it's okay if our "B" side is different than someone else's...even though it may not be "our groove". With people like Gabe and Donna, we're more interested in "fixing the condition" than doing what we should be doing to all people in the first place - loving them. We need to be less focused on the labeling and more focused on the loving.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children also has many lighthearted moments. Gabe's on-air work in the studio and the themed radio shows put me back in the studio during the on-air days of my career, which delighted the heck out of me. Those early days on the air are always the ones you remember most and most fondly. I also very much enjoyed the Ugly Children Brigade and their antics based on Gabe's radio shows. The obscure bands and songs made me smile, inspiring me to begin compiling my own list.

Whether you know a Gabe or a Donna, Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is not only and important book, it is a poignant book of your not-so-typical-coming of Gabe story. Kirstin Cronn-Mills' writing style is one that flows well and quickly while maintaining the depth of character and subject matter. Her use of quirky chapter headings in both Beautiful Music for Ugly Children and The Sky Always Hears Me and The Hills Don't Mind are a highlight to me and are an added dimension to me getting to know her main characters better.

Here's hoping Gabe and Donna find the happiness every human being seeks.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Coming-of-age story October 13, 2012

By Abria @ Shall Write Reviews

Format:Paperback

I requested Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills from NetGalley because I'm drawn to books with unconventional narrators. I loved Death as a narrator in The Book Thief, Luster in The Sound and the Fury, and transgender youth narrators are still pretty rare -- I was sold.

Overall, Beautiful Music for Ugly Children was a good book. It had an interesting protagonist, a good supporting cast, a believable conflict, and good pacing. There were two things that reduced my experience of this book to three stars instead of five, but I know there is plenty of room for people to enjoy this book more than I did. Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is an emotionally appealing book, and everyone can take something away from it.

The things that made this book less than perfect for me were, firstly, that the summary is a little bit misleading. It makes it seem that the music contest will be the climax of the book, but by the time it rolls around it's almost a non-event. The book is about so much more than that, but the book's flap copy reduces it to something predictable and pedestrian. This is a novel about how we shape our own identities, and sometimes we carve out a family for ourselves along the way. The future is important, but not at the cost of the present.

The second thing that disappointed me was that music is under-utilized in the text. Every chapter of Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is riddled with musical references, either to the history of musical culture in America or to specific songs. Your music library will undoubtedly grow a little over the course of reading this book. But as significant as music was supposed to be to the plot, I never felt that Gabe had much emotional connection to the songs he played on his radio show or at the radio contest. Cronn-Mills name-drops with songs and artists, and then moves on without fully conveying what these songs mean, what atmosphere they provide, or what their value to the story is. It's almost like the reader is expected to either a) know the songs or b) stop reading to research the songs and then return to the book.

Although Beautiful Music for Ugly Children has its problems, it's still a worthwhile read if you're at all interested in unconventional protagonists. The story is beautifully told and its issues handled with sensitivity. It's a good book for teens and lovers of YA, one that I would recommend.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A definite must read January 16, 2013

By R.D.

Format:Paperback

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is an amazing, beautiful novel. The more I think about it, the more I love it.

The book is about Gabe and not just about his coming out as transgender. It's about his passionate love for music, his relationships, and his anxieties and fears. There are scenes in the book that make you laugh out loud and others that make your eyes all teary. I love Gabe as a character and really like the different artists and songs that are brought up in the story. I'm a huge music fan myself so it was really nice to read about the different tunes.

I honestly couldn't put the book down. I got it yesterday from the library and it was impossible for me to take breaks from the story. I wish there were more books like this one, especially in the YA genre.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is definitely going in my favorites list and I will definitely read Kirstin Cronn-Mills' other books. I wish I could write more, but like I've said before, it's so hard for me to write reviews of books that I love so much. This is one of those times.