Book 4: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan. Penguin, 2010

Okay, this is going to be one close race for my favorite book of the challenge. On a strictly critical level, Dramarama is probably the better book -- curiously enough, they have a number of similarities -- but WG, WG had me laughing an average of once a page, and we're talking 310 pages here. I could name a number of things that I disliked about it, but why bother when I loved it so much? So, so much fun and really touching, too. I don't think I've ever read a better collaboration. * (14 & up)

Book from the public library

310 pages
Reading time: 3hours, 12 minutes
Blogging time: 7 minutes
Networking: 3 minutes

Book 2: Dramarama by E. Lockhart

Dramarama by E. Lockhart. Hyperion, 2007

Every time I read one of Lockhart's books -- which is about once a year, around this same time -- I wonder why on earth I haven't read everything she's written. The desperately tired young-adult-fiction-book-with-snappy-first-person-narrator genre comes to life in her hands. (Though she's not so shabby with third person, either.) I'm so achingly grateful to read an original narrative voice that I'd probably have enjoyed this even if it wasn't filled with brilliant themes about friendship and reinventing identities and discovering ones place in the world, all in an exciting theatrical package. * (12 & up)

I'm two for two! How long can this wonderful streak last? I'm going to play it fairly safe with Franny Billingsley's Chime next.

311 pages

Reading: 2 hours, 18 minutes
Blogging: 8 minutes
Networking: 4 minutes

review: Daddy, Papa, and Me

Daddy, Papa, and Me by Leslea Newman. Illustrated by Carol Thompson. Tricycle, 2009 (978-1-58246-262-2) $7.99 board

This is advertised (along with its companion, Mommy, Mama, and Me, which I haven't seen) as being the first board book featuring gay parents; assuming that's true, I'm glad the first ones are so appropriately board-bookish, with a text in simple rhyme and mixed media illustrations that are bright and lively.

The story is about a (no specified gender) child playing with daddy and papa: daddy helps paint, papa helps bake; daddy strums on a guitar, papa drums; daddy shows how to sew, papa shows how to throw; "Daddy's plane goes zoom, zoom, zoom! Papa's car goes vroom vroom vroom!" Nothing all that special, but nothing that makes you feel like you're hit over the head with a hammer, either. (Except maybe the aprons. I'm all for the two dads modeling non-stereotypical behavior, but do we have to model 1950s t.v. mom?)

I'm hoping this won't stay a one-of-kind for long, but for now, it's the go-to book for those looking for an enjoyable board book in which gay parents are taken for granted. No trauma, no speeches, just a normal day in a normal life. (1-4)

© 2010 Wendy E. Betts

FTC disclosure: Review copy borrowed from the public library. This blog is completely independent, but I receive a small percentage if you order books from Powell's via this site.

48 Hrs - Review: David Inside Out

(I read half of this book earlier in the day, but am putting all the minutes together now.)




David Inside Out by Lee Bantle. Henry Holt, 2009 (978-0-8050-8122-0) $16.99

Trying to figure out how to put the moves on a girl for the first time can be hard. "Was I supposed to touch her knee now?... Should I just drop my hand on her? Were you supposed to squeeze?" wonders David. But David has an extra problem... Kick, the girl who pretty clearly wants to be his girlfriend, isn't nearly as attractive to him as someone else -- his track teammate, Sean.

David is determined not to give in to his feelings. "This wasn't me. It couldn't be. Not gay. Anything but that." He makes a list of ways to be more straight, correcting himself with a snap of a rubber band on his wrist whenever he has a wrong feeling. Then Sean invites him to fool around, throwing all his best straight intentions out the window. David is scared of being out to his friends, but ready to be in love--but Sean refuses to admit he likes anything but getting off. "I don't kiss or write love poems... I don't put it in my mouth." Sean, David will find, is far more determined not to be gay than he could ever be.

Fast-paced and plot-focused, this sympathetic coming out story will probably have the most appeal to readers who are also struggling with their sexual identities. I found myself most interested in the secondary characters, whose actions and motivations are something of a puzzle to David, complicating his life. Sean has the private sex rules designed to prove that he's not really gay. Kick betrays his confession to her and then deliberately seduces him, perhaps in a misguided attempt to "cure" him, only to wind up hurt. Only his oldest friend Eddie, who recently came out himself, is really straightforward about who he is and what he wants... an excellent role model for the newly self-aware David.

The story has a small amount of graphic language and quite a few brief, non-explicit but not coy sex scenes. I was bothered that condoms are only mentioned in a heterosexual context, though it would have been quite narratively easy to have the person David talks to at a gay hotline drop a word about safe sex -- considering Sean's secretive, denial-filled approach to sex, he strikes me as a highly risky person to have unprotected encounters with. Recommended for mature readers. (15 & up)

© 2009 Wendy E. Betts


R: 1 hour, 46 minutes
B: 43 minutes
RB: 4 minutes

Other Blog Reviews:

The Goddess of YA Literature
The 3 Rs of Summer
Queer YA
Stop, Drop and Read -- interesting, albeit somewhat insensitive review by someone who felt "weirded out" by gay people and now has a better sense of the discrimination they face. The book may have more general appeal than I had thought.

review: Pedro and Me

Note: this review is of the original 2000 edition; I haven't had a chance to see the new edition. As far as I can tell, it's unchanged except for the cover and a new foreword by the author.



Pedro and Me written and illustrated by Judd Winick. Henry Holt, 2000 (0-8050-6403-6); 2009 (978-0-8050-8964-6) $16.95

I started reading this nonfiction graphic "novel" less than thrilled with the heavily detailed, semi-realistic style of the drawings, but when I got to Judd's exquisitely grumpy portrayal of himself as "an unhappy kid," I was hooked. And though there continued to be elements of the artistic style that I found unattractive, overall it is a wonderful marriage of words and pictures, just what a graphic novel should be.

Pedro and Me is the story of how Judd Winick become involved in one of the most important relationships of his life: as a cast member of MTV's "The Real World," he found himself rooming with Pedro Zamora, a gay, HIV-positive AIDS educator, who did an excellent job of educating the tense and naive Judd about the realities of living with someone with HIV. Tragically, that reality also included Pedro's death at the age of 22.

I've never seen "The Real World" so I don't have much of a sense of how "real" any of it actually felt to viewers. (Winick highlights the falseness of the situation from the insider point of view by showing his first meeting with Pam, who would later become his fiance, and then showing the same scene from a further perspective which includes three hovering cameramen.) But Pedro and Me is both joyfully and painfully real. Winick skillfully uses cartooning technique to drive home emotions, sometimes with humor, as in his nervous vision of the AIDS virus walking around on two legs saying "Mornin,'" and sometimes with extreme pathos, as in the final scene of Pedro's death, a small white box against a background of blackness. Biographies of himself and Pedro help us understand how the two of them got to that particular place in time, with an especially germane depiction of the adolescent Pedro willingly being used by older men for sex because he so desperately longed for love. Finally, Judd shows how several chance encounters with strangers helped him grieve for Pedro and understand how important Pedro's short life had been. And he amply fulfills the goal of making even people like me, who had never heard of Pedro, understand and be touched by him as well. (14 & up)

© 2009 Wendy E. Betts

Book Six: grl2grl by Julie Anne Peters

reading: 8:20-9:10, 9:20-9:30 (1 hour) 151 pages
writing: 10:50-11:20 (30 minutes)

So I chose this book because I needed something light after the last few. Hahahahahahahaha.






grl2grl by Julie Anne Peters. Little, Brown, 2007 (978-0-316-01343-7) $11.99 pb

Ten short glimpses into the lives of young lesbians (and one transgendered girl to "boi") make up a thoughtful, compelling and sometimes harrowing book. From the seemingly mundane (daring to strike up a conversation with an intriguing stranger) to the unspeakably awful (living with the brutal sexual abuse of a father), these are sympathetic and emotionally vivid portraits of girls at significant moments in their lives. The level of pain revealed is sometimes intense; even a tender story about unspoken love has a surprise twist that punches the gut. By the time the last story ended happily, I was almost ready to cry with relief.

Peters writes with exquisite attention to language and detail, making each first person narrative feel distinct and individual. The different emotions each girl--and boi--experience all come to vivid life, and it can be hard to let the characters go after just a few pages, especially when some of them have hurt so much within those pages. I would love to see Peters expand some of these stories, especially "Stone Cold Butch" and "Boi," in order to give those characters a chance to move beyond the events told here, and find some happiness. (14 & up)