Ten years (or more) ago this might have been an important book; but even with its positive close, today it is an...
Texas high school senior and quarterback David has a secret no one can discover.
Forced by his English teacher to keep a journal in which he writes for 10 minutes, three times a week, David chronicles his innermost secret: his attraction to men. Over the course of a semester, he falls for Jon, the new kid from Chicago, who’s a great singer and star of the swim team. He also writes of his relationship with Monica, his cheerleader girlfriend, who has a cool gay uncle who was also a football star. But most painful are his crumbling relationships with his beer-loving, homophobic father and his clingy (though straight) best friend, Tyler, who was up for QB until he was injured. Can David navigate this minefield and hang on to his scholarship offer from USC? Straining the conceit of the journal from the outset, this ill-conceived title “in the tradition of Go Ask Alice” equates being gay with being an alcoholic, a drug addict and an anorexic in its packaging alone. When gay teens need an example of pride, an “Anonymous” byline is a giant leap backward; and with a penultimate paragraph concluding “I feel like I don’t have anything to hide,” that “Anonymous” is ironic to a fault.
Ten years (or more) ago this might have been an important book; but even with its positive close, today it is an embarrassment. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: June 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8986-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Several yards short of a touchdown.
A transgender boy starting over at a new school falls hard for a popular cheerleader with a reputation to protect in this debut.
On the first day of senior year, transgender boy Pony locks eyes with cisgender cheerleader Georgia. They both have pasts they want to leave behind. No one at Hillcrest High knows that Pony is transgender, and he intends to keep it that way. Georgia’s last boyfriend shook her trust in boys, and now she’s determined to forget him. As mutual attraction draws them together, Pony and Georgia must decide what they are willing to risk for a relationship. Pony’s best friend, Max, who is also transgender, disapproves of Pony’s choice to live stealth; this disagreement leads to serious conflict in their relationship. Meanwhile, Georgia and Pony behave as if Pony’s trans identity was a secret he was lying to her about rather than private information for him to share of his own volition. The characters only arrive at a hopeful resolution after Pony pays high physical and emotional prices. McSmith places repeated emphasis on the born-in-the-wrong-body narrative when the characters discuss trans identities. Whiteness is situated as the norm, and all main characters are white.
Several yards short of a touchdown. (Fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-294317-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
The shelves are already crowded with teens-training-for-space stories; there’s no need to make room for this one.
Teens become astronauts in record time for an inaugural space mission.
After losing his family to “the greatest flood Rome has ever known,” skilled white Italian swimmer Leo Danieli would never have expected that in his darkest moment he would be drafted by the European Space Agency to attend the International Space Training Camp, where teens will train to terraform and colonize Jupiter’s moon Europa for human settlement. California native Naomi Ardalan, a second-generation Iranian-American, has also been chosen for her expertise in science and technology. During a period of violent climate change worldwide, Earth’s governments are desperate to draft teens for a space mission for which they have only a few weeks in which to prepare. Twenty-four teen finalists, many orphaned by cataclysmic natural disasters, have been chosen from all over the world to compete for this space colonization mission. Warnings come to Leo and Naomi that there is a more sinister aspect to this mission, especially after things go tragically awry with other candidates during the training. The relationship that develops between Naomi and Leo feels forced, as if their meeting necessitates speedy deployment of a romantic cliché. The use of predictable plot devices, along with the fundamentally ludicrous premise, undermines any believability that would make a reader invest in such an elaborate space journey.
The shelves are already crowded with teens-training-for-space stories; there’s no need to make room for this one. (Science fiction. 14-17)Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-265894-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
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