Dear Mothman
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Poet and author Robin Gow’s moving middle-grade novel in verse Dear Mothman is about a young trans boy dealing with the loss of his friend by writing to his favorite cryptid.
Halfway through sixth grade, Noah’s best friend and the only other trans boy in his school, Lewis, passed away in a car accident. Adventurous and curious, Lewis was always bringing a new paranormal story to share with Noah. Together they daydreamed about cryptids and shared discovering their genders and names.
After Lewis’s death, lonely and yearning for someone who could understand him like Lewis once did, Noah starts writing letters to Mothman, wondering if he would understand how Noah feels and also looking for evidence of Mothman’s existence in the vast woods surrounding his small Poconos town. Noah becomes determined to make his science fair project about Mothman, despite his teachers and parents urging him to make a project about something “real.”
Meanwhile, as Noah tries to find Mothman, he also starts to make friends with a group of girls in his grade, Hanna, Molly, and Alice, with whom he’d been friendly, but never close to. Now, they welcome him, and he starts to open up to each of them, especially Hanna, whom Noah has a crush on. But as strange things start to happen and Noah becomes sure of Mothman’s existence, his parents and teachers don’t believe him. Noah decides it’s up to him to risk everything, trek into the woods, and find Mothman himself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An autistic, transgender sixth grader attempts to correspond with a cryptid following his best friend's death in this poignant novel from Gow (A Million Quiet Revolutions). Lewis Hugh was the only person whom Noah Romano was out to; since Lewis died in a car accident three months ago, Noah has been feeling lonely and unmoored. Noah doesn't believe in Mothman, as Lewis did, but he decides to use Lewis's idea of finding the figure for a science fair project. As he hunts for proof, writing letters to Mothman that he leaves under a tree, he also receives thoughtful support from adults in his life and befriends a trio of LARPers. Alternating between first-person narration and letters to Mothman, and peppered with creepy-cute sketch-style illustrations, this touching free verse story abounds with hard-hitting and tender lines about grief, queerness, and neurodivergence—concepts that Noah ponders alongside the idea of monstrosity (" ‘monster' is what people become/ when other people are afraid of them/ for being different"). Steeped in the atmosphere of a Pennsylvania coal mining town, Noah's journey to himself is at once melancholy and empowering. Noah is of Irish and Italian heritage; secondary characters represent racial diversity. Ages 10–14.