Kai Cheng Thom is a Chinese-Canadian writer, performance artist, mental health community worker, youth counsellor, and former social worker. Thom, a non-binary transgender woman, has published six books, including the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir; the poetry collection a place called No Homeland; a children’s book, From the Stars in The Sky to the Fish in the Sea; I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World; and Falling Back in Love With Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls, which was nominated for the 2024 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She won the 2017 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Prize in 2016 for Transgender Fiction and in 2017 for Transgender Poetry. Most recently, Thom added “advice columnist” to her repertoire with her new column for Xtra, “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse.” Thom lives in Toronto.
For fans of Judy Blume and Lee Knox Ostertag, a heartfelt and hilarious MG debut from Kai Cheng Thom about learning to listen to that quiet, bold voice in your heart.
Nor Numinem. A town of hope and beauty. A place where freedom for all blooms as abundantly as the flowering vines that cover the buildings on every street. Yet even in this beautiful town, a kid like Maia’s got problems.
Maia is a shapeshifter.
And worse, she’s starting middle school.
In every generation, a special few of Nor Numinem are born shapeshifters: children who develop the mysterious ability to transform into a part-animal shape. Unfortunately for Maia, her ability is merely this: to grow giant moth wings that grow uncontrollably out of her back whenever she’s excited, or upset, or for some reason, whenever her new classmate Luke looks at her in a particular way. Worse than worse? Maia’s wings are useless. Weak and fragile–unlike her talented friends.
But Maia’s problems are about get much harder than even she knows. A strange illness is spreading through the gardens of Nor Numinem. The very gardens that feed and sustain this once-perfect town. Worse still, some of the adults think the shapeshifter children are to blame. As rumors turn into hate, life gets tougher for those who aren’t seen as “normal”. Maia and her friends will soon discover that there is a dark rift in Nor Numinem, one that will take all their talents, known and unknown, to heal.
In the spirit of reconciliation, we acknowledge that we live, work and play on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Iyarhe Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government of the Métis Nation within Alberta District 6, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.
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