The 2009 Rainbow List: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Books for Teens
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Middle/Early Young Adult Fiction
NO CASTLES HERE
A.C.E.
Bauer
Eleven-year-old Augie Boretski dreams of escaping his run-down Camden, New Jersey, neighborhood, but things start to turn around with help from a Big Brother, a music teacher, and a mysterious bookstore owner, so when his school is in trouble, he pulls the community together to save it.
AFTER TUPAC & D FOSTER
by Jacqueline Woodson
In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.
GIRL FROM MARS
by Tamara Bach
Miriam dreams of escaping from her boring small-town life and going to the big city to start her own life, especially when she develops romantic feelings for a girl named Laura and forms a new outlook after a weekend in the city.
DEBBIE HARRY SINGS IN FRENCH
by Meagan Brothers
When Johnny completes an alcohol rehabilitation program and his mother sends him to live with his uncle in North Carolina, he meets Maria, who seems to understand his fascination with the new wave band Blondie, and he learns about his deceased father's youthful forays into "glam rock," which gives him perspective on himself, his past and his current life.
NAOMI AND ELY'S NO KISS LIST
by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Although they have been friends and neighbors all their lives, straight Naomi and gay Ely find their relationship severely strained during their freshman year at New York University.
DOWN TO THE BONE
by Mayra Lazara Dole
Laura, a seventeen-year-old Cuban American girl, is thrown out of her house when her mother discovers she is a lesbian, but after trying to change her heart and hide from the truth, Laura finally comes to terms with who she is and learns to love and respect herself.
SUICIDE NOTES
by Michael Thomas Ford
Brimming with sarcasm, fifteen-year-old Jeff describes his stay in a psychiatric ward after attempting to commit suicide.
FANCY WHITE TRASH
by Marjetta Geerling
Fifteen-year-old Abby Savage hopes that her five rules for falling in love will keep her from making the same mistakes as her mother and two older sisters—all unwed mothers who have slept with the same man, among others—while she also tries to help her best friend Cody admit that he is gay, and decide how she really feels about Cody's older brother, Jackson.
TWO PARTIES, ONE TUX, AND A VERY SHORT FILM ABOUT THE GRAPES OF WRATH
by Steven Goldman
Mitch, a shy and awkward high school junior, negotiates the difficult social situations he encounters, both with girls and with his best friend David, after David reveals to him that he is gay.
MAP OF IRELAND
by Stephanie Grant
In 1974, the first year of busing in Boston, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Ann Ahern's lesbianism, which has isolated her from other white students, draws her to her African French teacher and leads her to insights into Blacks' struggles in the post-Civil Rights era.
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THE LAST EXIT TO NORMAL
by Michael Harmon
Yanked out of his city life and plunked down into a small Montana town with his father and his father's boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Ben, angry and resentful about the changed circumstances of his life, begins to notice that something is not quite right with the little boy next door and determines to do something about it.
M+O 4EVR
by Tonya Cherie Hegamin
In parallel stories, Hannah, a slave, finds love while fleeing a Maryland plantation in 1842, and in the present, Opal watches her life-long best friend, Marianne, pull away and eventually lose her life in the same Pennsylvania ravine where Hannah died.
ANOTHER KIND OF COWBOY
by Susan Juby
In Vancouver, British Columbia, two teenage dressage riders, one a spoiled rich girl and the other a closeted gay sixteen-year-old boy, come to terms with their identities and learn to accept themselves.
MY MOST EXCELLENT YEAR: A NOVEL OF LOVE, MARY POPPINS & FENWAY PARK
by Steve Kluger
Three teenagers in Boston narrate their experiences of a year of new friendships, first loves, and coming into their own.
OUT OF THE POCKET
by Bill Konigsberg
As Bobby Framingham, quarterback of his high school football team, finally acknowledges to himself that he is gay, events start to spin out of control when his sexual orientation is revealed in the student newspaper and then in the local press, and he learns that his father has cancer.
HOW THEY MET, AND OTHER STORIES
by David Levithan
Here are 18 stories, all about love, and about all kinds of love. From the aching for the one you pine for, to standing up and speaking up for the one you love, to pure joy and happiness, these love stories run the gamut of that emotion that at some point has turned every one of us inside out and upside down.
MY TIKI GIRL
by Jennifer McMahon
Fifteen-year-old Maggie, still grieving the loss of her mother in an accident that also gave her a limp, has turned her back on old friends but connects with a new student, Dahlia, who makes Maggie part of her unconventional family and plans their future together as roving musicians and lovers.
SKIM
by Mariko Tamaki
When her classmate Katie is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. The popular clique starts a club to boost school spirit, but Skim sinks into an ever-deepening depression.
WHAT THEY ALWAYS TELL US
by Martin Wilson
Sixteen-year-old Alex feels so disconnected from his friends that he starts his junior year at a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, high school by attempting suicide, but soon, a friend of his older brother draws him into cross-country running and a new understanding of himself.
LOVE & LIES: MARISOL'S STORY
by Ellen Wittlinger
When Marisol, a self-confident eighteen-year-old lesbian, moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work and try to write a novel, she falls under the spell of her beautiful but deceitful writing teacher, while also befriending a shy, vulnerable girl from Indiana.
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GAY AMERICA: STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY
by Linas Alsenas
The fascinating story of gay people throughout America’s history is told with clear text and lots of photography.
THE MEMOIRS OF A BEAUTIFUL BOY
by Robert Leleux
Through hilarious stories of a comically dysfunctional family, Leleux describes growing up gay in Texas.
SEX VARIANT WOMAN: THE LIFE OF JEANNETTE HOWARD FOSTER
by Joanne Passet
Foster’s roller-coaster life and studies defined lesbian history in the twentieth century.
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