Posted by: blogando on: July 16, 2009
Polacco, Patricia. In Our Mother’s House. 2009. unp. Philomel, $17.99. (978-0-399-25076-7). Gr. 1-3. Although the family of three children and two parents seem like any other family on the block, filled with love and respect, one woman doesn’t accept them because the two parents are both women. The narrator of the story from her adoption […]
Posted by: blogando on: July 16, 2009
Park, Judith. YSquare Plus. 2008 (December). 192p. Yen Press, $10.99. (978-0-7595-2927-4). Gr. 9-12. Yagate tries to get his friend Yoshitaka help him catch the man of his dreams, but his friend Chana has her eye on the same guy, handsome college student Ra-Myun. The story shows the value of friendship, and the love triangles among […]
Posted by: blogando on: July 16, 2009
Garsee, Jeannine. Say the Word. 2009. 360p. Bloomsbury, $16.99. (978-1-599990-333-0). Gr. 11-12: The “perfect” Shawna Gallagher finds her life turned upside down when she is 17 after her estranged lesbian mother dies and she discovers a family in the mother’s partner and two sons. The book covers a lot of ground—religion (Shawna is Roman Catholic […]
Posted by: blogando on: July 16, 2009
Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America. Ed. Mitchell Gold with Mindy Drucker. 2008. 369p. Greenleaf Book Group Press, $23.95. (978-1-929774-10-4). Gr. 11-12: Coming-out stories from 40 Americans—many of them activists and politicians—show that attitude, not homosexuality, is not the problem in our society. […]
Posted by: blogando on: July 16, 2009
Collins, Pat Lowery. Hidden Voices: The Orphan Musicians of Venice. 2009. 345p. Candlestick, $17.99. (978-0-7636-3917-4). Ages 12+: In the early 1700s a teenage girl suffers from her unrequited love for another girl in the Ospedale della Pieta, an orphanage renowned for its extraordinary musical program. Although the love is not referred to specifically as being […]
Posted by: blogando on: July 16, 2009
Amateau, Gigi. A Certain Strain of Peculiar. 2009. 261p. Candlewick, $16.99. (978-0-7636-3009-6). Gr. 6-8: A Fed up with her classmates’ bullying and her increasing panic attacks, 13-year-old Mary Harold Woods runs away to live with her grandmother where she finds her place while building her muscles, caring for a Black Angus cow, helping wrangle the […]
Posted by: blogando on: July 14, 2009
D’Arcangelo, Lyndsey. The Trouble with Emily Dickinson. Alpha World Press, Oct. 2008. 978-0-9821044-0-8. Grades 8 to 12. I almost didn’t include a photo of the cover for this book because it’s so, um, ugly. It’s a shame, because the book itself is charming. The publishers compare the story to Romeo and Juliet, but I think […]
Posted by: blogando on: June 14, 2009
Sheehan, Tamara. The Tenth Man. December 2008. 188 p. Prizm, $13.95. (978-1-60370-553-0). Gr. 9-12. Prizm Books is a subsidiary of Torquere Press, based in Round Rock, Texas, (just north of Austin). Prizm’s motto is “Stories for every young adult under the rainbow.” If you visit their website you’ll find out that their mission is to […]
Posted by: John on: May 28, 2009
Burd, Nick. The Vast Fields of Ordinary. Dial Books, May 2009. 9780803733404.309p . Grades 10-12. In his last summer before college, Dade is busy juggling his dysfunctional parents and his dysfunctional boyfriend when he meets Alex, and discovers in him a way to make it through the summer. Nick Burd’s first offering is a young […]
Posted by: blogando on: April 28, 2009
Rothschild, Matthew. Dumbfounded: Big Money. Big Hair. Big Problems. or Why Having It All Isn’t for Sissies. Random House, August 2008. 9780307405425. 320p. Grades 8-12. The author, Matthew Rothschild, was abandoned by his mother to be raised by his two Jewish grandparents in their exclusive, and very much restricted apartment building in New York City. […]