“Dennis was different,” David Walliams writes in the opening line of his debut novel, The Boy in the Dress. Dennis looks like “an ordinary-twelve-year old boy,” but he “felt different.” There are changes at home: His mother has just left, leaving behind a son and a dress—a stunning yellow one that he sees variations of on Vogue’s cover at the local newsstand, and in the sketchbook of the school’s coolest girl. And Dennis is noticing changes in himself: He loves wearing the dress as much as he loves wearing his cleats—he’s the school’s star soccer player. Walliams’s portrayal of adolescent growing pains moves children and adults alike in this new musical adaptation. —C.J.F.