I loved The Queen Bees of Tybee County (publication date April 15, 2025) by Kyle Casey Chu! I loved meeting Derrick Chan, his best friend JJ, grandmother Claudia, and the new friends he meets in Heritage, Georgia.
As the book open, 7th grader Derrick is playing in the championship basketball game as a point guard, making the winning basket at the end of the school year. He and JJ have big plans for basketball camp, but at dinner afterwards, his father tells him that finances are tight, and he’s not going to be able to go. Instead, he’ll be spending the summer with his grandmother in the small town where his father grew up as part of the only Chinese-American family. Derrick is disappointed, but as kids don’t have much control over what happens to them, he goes with it and hopes he can find out more about why he only sees his grandmother once a year when she comes to see them.
Derrick also has a secret that he doesn’t share with anyone–sometimes, in the bathroom, he takes out his mother’s things and paints his nails and puts on her makeup as a way of being close to her, as she’s been gone from cancer for several years.
When he gets to Heritage, he finds out that his grandmother is beloved by some teens she has befriended, and is a master seamstress of gowns for the local pageant. He makes some real friends, including an African-American queer boy, and after some missteps, he is able to be honest with them and they have a great summer.
He also learns more about his father and mother and the reasons why his father broke off a lot of contact with his grandmother, and it has to do with what he thought was his secret. He learns that he’s always loved dresses and silky fabrics, ever since he was a baby, and his friends connect him with a makeup artist. They hatch a plan for Derrick to compete in the pageant in drag, and they overcome the obstacles the small town puts in his way.
I loved his journey of self-discovery and acceptance. I really enjoyed how he was able to integrate the two sides of himself that he didn’t think he would ever be able to, and that he tried drag and was accepted by his best friend and his father. I highly recommend this middle-grade novel.
Though I consider it weight-neutral because there aren’t any fat characters, there was one description that I thought verged on fat-positive. In a description of his best friend, JJ, in the locker room, Derrick notes “his lucky cross necklace dangles over a jolly paunch of belly.” I was pleased to see this!
Reading While Fat 