Carlos (born in 1939) was an innovator from the start. She began piano lessons at the age of six, but because the family had no money, her father drew a keyboard on a piece of paper for her to practice. At the age of fourteen, Carlos won a Westinghouse Science competition by creating her own computer. Intrigued early on by tape composers like Pierre Henry, she started experimenting on her own. She also became fascinated with the tunings for various keys and, after the family was finally able to purchase an instrument, would often retune it in experimental intervals of her own.

In sharing her stories, Jennings is cheerily upbeat, though she says that she does encounter haters and sometimes suffers from depression. She confides these deeply personal matters with an honesty that readers don’t generally get from an adult.

SCOTTI HOUSE, the heroine of Vin Packer’s new novel, is a male-to-female (MTF) transsexual, a pre-op whose metamorphosis is fraught with difficulty. In another life she’d earned a PhD from Princeton and worked as a writer and teacher.