Gino has expressed some regrets about deadnaming their character with this title, and in 2021 announced that they were renaming the novel Melissa's Story. The working title of the novel was Girl George (a reference to Boy George), though when the book was bought by Scholastic, this was changed to the present title to broaden readership. Gino is best known for their 2015 debut novel Melissa, a middle grade novel featuring a young transgender girl, which they first began work on in 2003.

They have also spent time living in an RV and driving around the country.

Gino was born and raised in Staten Island, New York, but over the years they have lived in such locations as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Brooklyn, New York Astoria, Queens Northampton, Massachusetts and Oakland, California.

Gino is genderqueer and uses singular they pronouns and the honorific Mx. Gino's debut book, Melissa, was the winner of the 2016 Stonewall Book Award as well as the 2016 Lambda Literary Award in the category of LGBT Children's/Young Adult. Despite the book’s flaws, this is one of the more approachable books about transgender kids and one of the few aimed at younger readers, and its emotional depiction of George’s quandary will likely elicit reader sympathy.Melissa, You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P!Īlex Gino is an American children's book writer. However, the writing is sometimes awkward and the book treats the Charlotte plan with perplexing seriousness, given its obvious flaws (surely Charlotte’s most salient characteristic is her species, not her gender wouldn’t Fern be a more effective role?) most characters are generally flat and directive, shifting instantly from opposition to support to maximize the book’s climax. George’s plight is keenly conveyed, and Gino sets it out in terms easily understandable to contemporary elementary-schoolers crass but affectionate older brother Scott is a solid anti-authoritarian authority who capably demonstrates low-key acceptance while providing some voice for those surprised by George’s secret. When her teacher sternly forbids George’s consideration for a girl’s part, George and her friend Kelly concoct a scheme to get George onstage as Charlotte nonetheless. When her class plans to put on a theatrical version of Charlotte’s Web, she gets an idea: if she rejects the boy’s roles and instead plays the girl’s role of Charlotte, then it will be apparent to all-classmates, her teacher, her mother-that she’s a girl. Fourth-grader George has a problem: everybody considers her a boy, but she knows she’s really a girl, although she hasn’t yet told anyone this realization.

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