I could say all sorts of things about Lloyd Alexander's stand-alone fantasy adventure road novel "The Arkadians", which has a charming game to telephone sort of Greek mythology background and an underlying lesson of "society has told you there are men things and women things but actually everything and everyone is better and happier if you recognize they're just people things and embrace men things and women things" but I remember being ten.
The most important thing about "The Arkadians" is that one of the main characters is a poet who has been turned into an ass and he is always referred to an ass which any big reader elementary school age kid knows IS another word for donkey but it also a swear word so if you use it you can just say you're talking about this book you're reading.