Dear Mothman

Overview

Told in verse, Dear Mothman follows Noah, a trans boy still reeling from the sudden death of Lewis, his best friend and the only other trans kid at his school. Unsure how to hold his grief, Noah begins addressing letters to Mothman, the cryptid Lewis was fascinated by, half-hoping the creature might understand a loneliness he can't explain to anyone else.

When odd occurrences near his home suggest the woods might hold more than he assumed, Noah pitches a Mothman investigation for his school science fair, over his teacher's objections that he choose something more conventional. The project becomes a strange kind of lifeline, drawing him into a new friendship with a group of girls in his class and easing, if only briefly, the isolation that has followed Lewis's death.

As the science fair deadline approaches and Noah has nothing concrete to show for his search, the novel turns toward a final trip into the woods, where he must decide how far he's willing to go in pursuit of something unprovable but deeply felt.

Grief, Belief, and the Space Between

Gow uses the figure of Mothman less as a monster story than as a vessel for mourning: a way of asking what happens to the things we can no longer say to someone who has died. Noah's letters function as a private grammar of grief, and his gradual openness to the possibility of Mothman mirrors his slower, harder work of staying open to new friendship after loss. The verse format lends the book an intimacy suited to a narrator working through feelings too raw or unfamiliar for full sentences.

The novel also sits within a small but growing body of children's and middle grade literature that centers trans characters without making transness the sum of the plot; here it is one fact among many about Noah, alongside his shyness, his curiosity, and his loyalty to a friend he lost. The science fair thread adds a quieter thematic layer, too, pitting institutional ideas of what counts as "real" evidence against a grieving child's need to believe in something larger than what can be measured.

Why Dear Mothman Has Been Challenged

Gender identity is the throughline of most objections raised against the book, since Noah's transness is central to how he is introduced and understood, and some challengers have argued that a middle grade audience is too young to encounter a transgender protagonist at all. Related complaints point to the book's treatment of Lewis, the other trans character, and to the broader presence of LGBTQ+ identity in a novel aimed at younger readers, with some objectors framing the subject matter as ideological rather than literary. Grief and a child's death are sometimes cited as well, with critics questioning whether the book's emotional weight is appropriate for its intended age group. In this catalog, the novel has been the subject of formal challenges in 2 states and 3 districts.