In the Role of Brie Hutchens...

Overview

Brie Hutchens has her eighth-grade year mapped out: land the lead in the school play, keep her grades just high enough to avoid trouble, and talk her parents into letting her transfer to a performing arts high school. A soap-opera devotee with a flair for the dramatic, Brie is more comfortable rehearsing a part than sitting with her own feelings.

That instinct to perform gets her into trouble when her mother catches her looking at photos of her favorite actress that read as more than casual admiration. Caught off guard, Brie blurts out a cover story: she's been chosen to crown the statue of Mary at her school's May Crowning, an honor reserved for the most devout and accomplished students. Her mother's pride leaves Brie scrambling to make the lie real, even though the role was never hers to claim.

Brie's scheme pulls her toward Kennedy, the classmate everyone assumes will be chosen instead, and toward feelings she isn't ready to name. Between a lackluster turn in the school play, a widening web of deception, and butterflies she can't explain away, Brie has to decide what she's willing to risk to be known honestly by the people closest to her.

A Coming-of-Age Story Inside a Faith Community

Nicole Melleby, who also wrote Hurricane Season, sets this novel inside a Catholic school and family life rather than at a distance from it, following Brie as she tries to reconcile who she is with the expectations of her faith, her parents, and her own self-image as the center of attention. The May Crowning ceremony works as more than a plot device; it stands in for the roles Brie feels pressured to play, both the honor-roll version of herself she invents for her mother and the leading-lady version she performs for everyone else.

The novel treats Brie's budding attraction to another girl as one thread among several rather than the sole focus, weaving it together with ordinary middle-school anxieties about grades, friendship, and fitting in. That approach places the book within a wider shift in recent middle-grade fiction toward depicting LGBTQ characters whose identities intersect with faith and family rather than exist in opposition to them, offering young readers a story where contradiction and belonging can coexist.

Why In the Role of Brie Hutchens... Has Been Challenged

Most objections to this novel target its suitability for middle-grade readers, typically those in the upper elementary and middle school range the book is marketed to. Critics argue that a protagonist's same-sex crush introduces romantic and sexual-identity content they consider too mature or premature for that age group, regardless of how lightly the subject is handled.

A related line of objection comes from the book's Catholic school setting. Some challengers contend that portraying a young character's attraction to another girl alongside sincere religious practice, including a ceremony honoring the Virgin Mary, conflicts with traditional religious teaching on sexuality and amounts to normalizing an identity those readers believe schools and libraries should not affirm. Others frame the concern more broadly as part of opposition to LGBTQ representation in children's literature generally, objecting to the book's presence on shelves accessible to younger students rather than to any single scene or passage. According to records maintained in this catalog, the title has drawn a formal challenge in 1 state and 1 school district.