Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Two Boys Kissing

When their friend, Tariq, is the victim of a hate crime, Craig and Harry (who used to be a couple) plan to set a new world record for longest kiss. They obtain permission to hold the event in front of their high school and Tariq sets up equipment to live stream. We also meet Peter and Neil who are in a relationship, Avery (a transsexual) and Ryan who are starting a relationship, and Cooper who is lost and feels totally alone. Watching over all of these young people is a host of dead AIDS victims who cheer and encourage them and are frustrated when their advice is not heard.

Of course these young men are not alone. We also meet their family and community members who have their own reactions and concerns for them. Luckily the ones with the bad reactions are in the minority and we see how the event does bring people together and  celebrate love. We also see how Harry supports Craig and helps in reach their goal. We should all be so lucky to have someone like him.

I highly recommend this book to YA readers.

Angels in America, Parts I & II by Tony Kushner (1993)

Angels in America

 Part I and Part II of this play take place in 1985, just as people were learning about AIDS and how it was transmitted. It was a very terrifying time for homosexuals since they not only were the ones most commonly afflicted, but it gave others additional reasons to fear and hate them. So many gay people have enough problems with being gay without the added stress of a fatal disease threatening them. Our cast of characters are composed of four homosexuals and members of their friends and family. We see how this illness affects them as well.

This play won the Pulitzer prize in 1993 and if you are interested, HBO produced it for their network and should be available to watch.

My rating for these plays: 

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Aristotle and Dante Discover
the Secrets of the Universe

Aristotle (Ari) and Dante meet at a public pool one summer and find they share so much. They are both third generation Mexican-American with college educated parents. They are also learning about their sexuality like so many young people their age. Neither of these journeys is easy but they both have so much to learn.

What is undeniable is the value of one close friend and these two show how important it is to be there when things go wrong. This is where friendship really counts. 

I highly recommend this book as an example of fine character development. We come to really like these two young men and hope that they will be happy.

My rating for this book:

Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy by Bil Wright

Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy

Sometimes I get really tired reading about self-absorbed, grouchy people, which is why this book is such a breath of fresh air!

As long as he can remember Carlos has wanted to be a makeup artist. He  studies magazines like Vogue and practices on his sister and his friends. He persuades one of his friends who works at Macy's to find out what he needs to do to apply for a job at one of the makeup counters. He enlists the help of Gleason Kraft (a secret crush) who is in a photography class to put together his portfolio. The results are so successful that Gleason is invited to show his photos in a gallery and Carlos gets a job at the FeatureFace cosmetics counter. All is good, right? Sorry. That would make for a boring story.

Carlos's sister has an abusive boyfriend and Carlos has incurred the wrath of the counter's supervisor so all is not perfect in his world. And will he ever be able to share his feelings with Gleason? His optimism and confidence make him an unstoppable force and a likable character. We sincerely root for him to help his family and succeed at his dream. 

My rating for this book:

Sparks: The Epic Completely True Blue, (Almost) Holy Quest of Debbie by S.J. Adams

Sparks

Debbie Woodlawn has kept a secret since sixth grade. She has a crush on her best friend, Lisa, and has to share this with her before Lisa makes out with a boy. She gets assistance from two kids, members of a self-formed Church of Blue. One of the things they do in this church is create a list of quests, such as seeing a person completely nude. Finding Lisa is a perfect quest.

The three of them dash around town trying to catch up with Debbie's backpack, get something to eat, find out where Lisa is going on her date, and all on $5.00. Overseeing this endeavor is the blue-painted Buddha on the dashboard.

It must be so hard to harbor a secret like this for so long. It does not help that Debbie lives in the Bible Belt and to be near her friend, joins a group called Active Christian Teens. Even a New Age mother doesn't see anything bothering her daughter. But Debbie must tell Lisa and find out if she has any chance at developing a relationship with her.

I recommend this book as a fun romp with the added bonus of a coming-of-sexuality story.
My rating for this book: 
 

The Edith Wharton Murders (1997)

I had so much fun reading this mystery by Lev Raphael and I am going to keep my eyes open for more of his books.

Nick Hoffman is a professor at SUM (State University of Michigan) and lives with his lover Stefan, a writer who also works at SUM. At a department meeting it is proposed that the university host a conference about Edith Wharton. Nick had published a bibliography about her and is named as the perfect person to organize it. He would love to get tenure and fears that refusing this task would ruin his chances at getting it. One of his reservations about this conference is that Wharton scholars are polarized into two opposing groups; the Edith Wharton Association and the Wharton Collective. As it happens, this should have been the least of his fears.

The writing of this book is intelligent and clever without being condescending and has a delightful sense of humor, possibly due to the fact that the main character is gay.

I wanted to smile when I listened to the paper given by Gustaf Carmichael. He ignored Wharton entirely to discuss an unknown Swiss woman novelist, Greta Inderbitzen, who was Wharton's contemporary and might even have met her in Paris. Around the small room I could sense how baffled and jealous the audience was. Carmichael was doing the ultimate act of academic one-upmanship by chamioning a writer no one had heard of or read.
He could make whatever claims for Inderbitzen's novels (all thirty-eight of them!) he wanted and no one could challenge him. It wasn't any more sophisticated, really, than a little kid sticking his tongue out and mocking his peers with a singsong "Nanny, nanny poo-poo!"
He was such a weasel in his leather pants and Vatican City T-shirt.

I liked Nick and his friends and I appreciated how he struggled with strident homophobes and the competitive life of a university professor. I hope other mystery fans will get as much of a kick out of this book as I did.

My rating for this book: +++ 1/2

Rainbow Boys (2001)

Alex Sanchez has written a series, starting with this book, about young gay men wrestling with different aspects of being gay in high school. The chapters are told from the viewpoint of three different young men; one openly gay (Nelson), one closeted gay (Kyle), and one closeted bisexual (Jason). They also have a variety of family reactions from very supportive and actively working for gay rights to an alcoholic and abusive father paired with a woman fearful for her own safety and unable to help.

They deal with coming out of the closet (when and how), gay bashing at school, losing one's virginity, and the fear of AIDS. This book does not gloss over any of these issues.

He asked questions for more than an hour and phoned the hot line three more times during the summer, speaking with different men and women. Each of them invited him to a Saturday meeting. No way, he thought. He wasn't about to sit in a room full of queers.
He pictured them all looking like the school fag, Nelson Glassman - or Nelly, as everyone called him. Even though a lot of people liked him, Jason couldn't stand the freak - his million earrings, his snapping fingers, his weird haircuts. Why didn't he just announce he was homo over the school loudspeaker?

I read this book because it is very popular and I wanted to see how these topics were handled. It shows the young men with all of the worries of straight teens with the added stress of being gay. I can only imagine how this book would, if not solve, at least let other young gay men know that they are probably not alone and that reaching out for help might help them. In the back of the book are resources that might be of use to them as well as their families.

I would recommend this book to gays in high school and their friends to help them understand what they are going through.

My rating for this book: +++

Angry Management (2009)

Chris Crutcher has brought together characters from his previous book (without aging them) and put them together in an anger management course led by a retired teacher/cowboy who gives us a brief introduction of each of them as a way of reminding us of their previous history. Kids from foster homes, abused kids, black/gay kids, obese kids, and all of them mad.

Amazingly, the ones best suited to help them are other damaged teens. They understand what it is like to live in situations that most people can't understand and while they can't solve the problems, they can listen.

"I WANT HER TO MAKE ME FEEL BAD!"

Montana grabs Tara and holds her tight.

Tara squirms a moment, then surrenders. How do you tell somebody that? How can she tell her mother that feeling bad feels right when everything in your world is wrong; that at first you need your foster parents to make things familiar, which in this case means f___d up. It makes such sense at a heart level, but even for a wordsmith like Montana West, it's impossible to articulate. It's so true, and it sounds so crazy.

The author is proud that his books have been challenged and removed from libraries because he puts in them things that many adults don't want to hear, or don't want their kids to hear. It is, of course, a shame, because what he has to say should be heard by every teen and every parent of a teen.

I highly recommend this book.

My rating for this book: +++++

Punkzilla (2009)

Stories about runaways are usually not very happy ones as this book by Adam Rapp illustrates. Jamie runs away (goes AWOL) from the military school his Army father put him in. He gets on a bus in Portland, Oregon to join his brother (gay, 8 years older, dying of AIDS), P. Along the way he writes letters to his brother and we read letters he has received from others.

You never know what's out there P like all the murderers and the rapists and the kidnappers and the freaks who have sex with animals or children or both or the weirdos who ride around naked on farm equipment. There's just so much you have to be careful of.

Along the way Jaimie meets all sorts of different people and learns a lot about himself as is true about most journey stories. It is tragic, however, that the one person he could connect with is ultimately unable to help him. There is so much a 14-year old needs to learn from a reliable steady adult and it is unfortunate that Jaimie doesn't have one.

This was a very sad story which would appeal to readers who also prefer emo type music.

My rating for this book: +++

Fly on the Wall (2006)

After a trilogy of books with magicians and monsters, I thought I would come back to reality. Well, almost.
E. Lockhart's book takes place in the Manhattan School for Arts and Music and we meet Gretchen Yee, a half-Chinese girl whose parents announce they are getting a divorce then leave her alone for a week (Dad has business in Hong Kong and Mom goes on a trip to the Caribbean).
They always warn you that you get what you wish for but Gretchen makes an offhand wish to her friend, Katya, anyway.
"Just tell me," sighs Katya. "What do you wish?"
"I wish I was fly on the wall of the boys' locker room," I say.
The next morning finds Gretchen clinging to the wall of the boys' locker room with four more legs than she went to bed with and a set of compound eyes and wings! I will leave it to you to imagine what she observed there over a span of several days, and what she learned about the boys from her school gives her a whole new perspective of their lives and her place in the high school.
There is a lot of humor in this book (as you can well imagine) but it has its moments when Gretchen learns harsh truths about the boys and their private lives.
I recommend this fast reading book with a warning about the frank discussion of boys' bodies.
My rating for this book: ++++

Echo & Weetzie Bat

Francesca Lia Block really likes to write about the Los Angeles scene. These two books are full of references of places, events, and life styles that are typical of L.A. I found it interesting that the main character in both of these books went to New York and made the Metropolitan Museum their favorite place there. I wonder if it is the same in her other books. Echo and Weetzie are both trying to discover who they are. In the end they both find someone. Echo ends up with a guy and Weetzie ends up with a housefull of characters one might call a family. I ended up wondering how these stories would continue since they end rather abruptly. Weetzie Bat continues for four more books but Echo doesn't.
These are short and very fast reads. I recommend this author if you are looking for a quick piece of candy in between more challenging stories.
My rating for these books: ++