"Wayward Children" (starting with "Every Heart a Doorway") by Seanan McGuire (series; 2016-)

 **A hand reached out to everyone who's ever known, not merely thought but known, that they don't belong in this world, and who's ever not thought but known that there has to be a better one someone out there**

"Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children" is a very special place.  It's a boarding school for children who followed the white rabbit, stepped into the wardrobe, took the red pill . . . and have now come back.  And have to learn how to live in this world again

This is a series of loosely collected novellas, some branching off from each other, some completely standalone (although we may meet those characters again later).  And it is, I want to say this clearly, some of the most perfect storytelling I've ever come across

Many of the stories take place at Eleanor West's, described in one book as "an island of misfit toys, a place to put the unfinished stories and broken wanderers who could butcher a deer and string a bow but no longer remembered what to do with indoor plumbing . . .", although others bounce around our world and into others.  But at its heart, many of these stories are rooted in this home for young children who don't fit in

The main character of the first book is a girl named Nancy, who fell into The Land of the Dead and found her place in the Lord of the Dead's court.  Upon returning home, she can't seem to get herself back to the pace of our vibrant, vivant world.  Her parents are at loose ends, trying to get back the cheerful and bubbly little girl they knew, until finally one day Eleanor West knocks on their door and says that she runs a boarding school for special children like Nancy

When Nancy arrives at the school, she opens her luggage only to find that the clothes she picked out--black, just like she used to wear in the Land of the Dead--have been replaced by the brightly colored clothes she used to wear.  Because that's how parents can be, sometimes:

Her parents loved her, there was no question of that, but their love was the sort that filled her suitcase with colors and kept trying to set her up on dates with local boys.  Their love wanted to fix her, and refused to see that she wasn't broken

I loved this book because of the perfect way it tells the stories of these children.  It acknowledges their pain, it acknowledges how hard it is to know that you're not in the right world

So yeah.  It is obvious, but worth mentioning directly, that this book is wonderfully, delightfully, inclusive.  This notion, of young people who feel like they don't fit in this world, is probably the least subtle metaphor for queerness since X-Men 2's "well, have you tried just not being a mutant?".  And it goes on to be even less subtle than that, as the characters we meet in this book are straight and homosexual and asexual and cisgender and transgender and nonbinary and really just a little bit of everything.  Some have phobias and neuroses and anxieties.  The representation is heartwarming, and the way these characters come together to support each other is fantastic.  Remember Nancy, the girl up above who found her bags full of brightly colored clothes her parents slipped into her luggage?  Well upon seeing this, her roommate introduces her to Kade, who is the school's resident wardrobe manager.  He brings her up to the attic and lets her swap out her clothing for black ones that other children's parents had slipped into their luggage

Because that's how we do it.  Sometimes we provide our friends with the love and support that they need

This book doesn't shy away from addressing the sadness and difficulties these children face.  Rejection and loss are arguably the central themes of the whole series, as tragic as that is.  That means the worlds that welcomed these children and then later sent them away back to the mundane world, and that means the reception these children received when they returned:

His mother loved him.  He'd never been able to convince himself otherwise, even when it would have been so much easier to believe she didn't.  But she couldn't--wouldn't--understand why he needed her to accept him as her son, when she'd loved him so completely as her daughter

So yes, with this subject, every single book has a deep undercurrent of sadness.  Most of the characters in this book are people trying to get back to the world in which they know they fit better, in which they know they belong.  Most of them realize that they'll probably never make it back.  When one character, new to the school, asks another how old she is, she replies like this:

"My window is closing, if that's what you're asking.  Every day I wake up a little more linear, a little less lost, and one day I'll be one of the women who says 'I had the most charming dream' and I'll mean it."

But that doesn't mean this series is depressing.  Because even though these children are in a world in which they don't belong, that doesn't make them wrong

That quote I put up above, about how Eleanor West's is a place for "misfit toys"?  Yeah, the quote doesn't end there.  It continues, ". . . It was also, more importantly, a holding pen for heroes.  Whatever they might have become when they'd been cast out of their chosen homes, they'd been heroes once, each in their own ways.  And they did not forget."

Because yes.  This is a book about people that might not fit into this world . . . but the things that make them "different" are also the things that make them great.  That make them heroes.  And when the time comes (because this is a fantasy adventure series, there are still battles to be fought, worlds to be explored, dragons to be defeated), they don't forget

This series tells every child that if you don't fit in, it's not your fault.  It's the world's fault.  And there's a better world for you, out there somewhere.  Even if you never make it there, even if you glimpsed it once and have never been able to get back, it's there, and that means there's nothing wrong with you.  You can still be a hero

I loved this book

You're nobody's rainbow.  You're nobody's princess.  You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you