The 2008 Rainbow List: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning Books for Teens
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Middle/Early Young Adult Fiction
THE MANNY FILES
by Christian
Burch
A shy young boy learns how to be more outgoing and self-confident from his male nanny.
THE ORDER OF THE POISON OAK
by Brent Hartinger
After "coming out" at school, sixteen-year-old Russel decides to take a counselor job at a camp for burn victims to get away from the antagonism of his classmates, but finds ten-year-old boys have just as many problems as he does.
TOTALLY JOE
by James Howe
As a school assignment, a thirteen-year-old boy writes an alphabiography–life from A to Z–and explores issues of friendship, family, school, and the challenges of being a gay teenager.
ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY NOT
by David LaRochelle
Chronicles a teenage boy's humorous attempts to fit in at his Minnesota high school by becoming a macho, girl-loving, "Playboy" pinup-displaying heterosexual.
GIRL, NEARLY 16, ABSOLUTE TORTURE
by Sue
Limb
Jess knows her summer plans are ruined but little could she imagine the huge surprise that awaits her when she visits her dad's home for the first time in years.
BETWEEN MOM AND JO
by Julie Anne Peters
Fourteen-year-old Nick has a three-legged dog named Lucky 2, some pet fish, and two mothers, whose relationship complicates his entire life as they face prejudice, work problems, alcoholism, cancer, and finally separation.
SWIMMING IN THE MONSOON SEA
by Shyam
Selvadurai
Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. He tries not to think of his life "before," when his doting mother was still alive. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith's ordered life is storm-tossed.
Middle/Early Young Adult Nonfiction
WHAT IF SOMEONE I KNOW IS GAY: ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE GAY AND LESBIAN
by Eric
Marcus
This radically updated resource covers basics and not-so-basics in a question-and-answer format.
NO EASY ANSWERS: BAYARD RUSTIN AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
by Calvin Craig Miller
Although a leader in the U.S. civil rights movement, Rustin’s arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment for a homosexual encounter were used to discredit his work.
WHEN I KNEW
edited by Robert Trachtenberg
More than 80 contributors briefly describe their self-discovery “eureka moment” regarding their sexual orientation in a fun book with a magazine style.
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VINTAGE: A GHOST STORY
by Steve
Berman
Walking on an empty stretch of highway on a lonely autumn night, a gay teen meets a strange boy who disappears into thin air. What begins as a dream turns into a nightmare as the dangerous obsession of a star athlete killed in 1957 begins to haunt the teen.
SOMEDAY THIS PAIN WILL BE USEFUL TO YOU
by Peter Cameron
Eighteen-year-old James, living in New York City with his older sister and divorced mother, struggles to find a direction for his life.
MY SIDE OF THE STORY
by Will
Davis
Jarold, aka, Jazz, is a typical sixteen year old boy. He lives at home with his two remarkably un-divorced parents, his holier-than-thou sister, and his overbearing grandmother. It's a life straight out of a TV show. Or so it seems... The truth is that Jazz's life is anything but picture perfect. He's seeing a shrink because his mom and dad found out he's gay; his schoolmates torment him every day; and he keeps bumping into his high school teacher at a local gay bar. To make matters worse, his best friend, Al, keeps pulling him into trouble. Jazz knows he has to keep everything together, at least through finals, so he can get away from this life once and for all. But, in his haste to leave everything behind, he comes to find out that the only thing he can't escape is himself.
HEAR US OUT!: LESBIAN AND GAY STORIES OF STRUGGLE, PROGRESS AND HOPE, 1950 TO THE PRESENT
by Nancy Garden
Fact and fiction show the struggles for LGBTQ teens in America during the past five decades.
HELLO, GROIN
by Beth
Goobie
When Dylan Kowolski agrees to create a display for her high school library, she has no idea of the trouble it's going to cause—for the school principal, her family, her boyfriend Cam and his jock friends, and her best friend Jocelyn. And for Dylan herself. If only her English class had been studying a normal, run-of-the-mill, mundane book like Lord of the Files instead of Foxfire things wouldn't have gotten so twisted. Then the world wouldn't have gone into such a massive funk. And Dylan wouldn't have had to face her deepest fear and the way she was letting it run her life.
WILD DOGS
by Helen
Humphreys
Every evening, Alice and five other people gather at the forest's edge, trying to call their dogs back from the feral pack they've joined. Becoming more deeply involved, Alice moves out to a cabin on land owned by Malcolm, one of the group, whose motives in having her there are suspicious. As she falls in love with the wildlife biologist whose wolf has gained lead of the pack, she feels the tug between love's wild power and her desire to domesticate it. After a tragic accident, all members of the group must rethink their lives and find their places in an untamed world.
BECOMING CHLOE
by Catherine Ryan Hyde
A gay teenage boy and a fragile teenage girl meet while living on the streets of New York City and eventually decide to take a road trip across America to discover whether or not the world is a beautiful place.
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WIDE AWAKE
by David Levithan
In the not-too-distant future, when a gay Jewish man is elected president of the United States, sixteen-year-old Duncan examines his feelings for his boyfriend, his political and religious beliefs, and tries to determine his rightful place in the world.
HERO
by Perry
Moore
Thom Creed, the gay son of a disowned superhero, finds that he, too, has special powers and is asked to join the very League that rejected his father, and it is there that Thom finds other misfits whom he can finally trust.
CRASHING AMERICA
by Katia
Noyes
After a sudden loss, a seventeen-year-old street punk named Girl, flees San Francisco hell-bent on chasing women and adventure. When an old friend challenges her to work the harvest, the cornfields of northern Nebraska flicker with idyllic promise. Can she bury her demons and find a place of belonging?
FAR FROM XANADU
by Julie Anne Peters
In a small Kansas town, sixteen-year-old Mary-Elizabeth "Mike" Szabo tries to come to terms with her father's suicide and her own homosexuality.
GRL2GRL
by Julie Anne Peters
In this honest and emotional short story collection, a renowned author and National Book Award finalist offers a stunning portrayal of young women as they navigate the hurdles of relationships and sexual identity.
FREAK SHOW
by James St. James
Having faced teasing that turned into a brutal attack, Christianity expressed as persecution, and the loss of his only real friend when he could no longer keep his crush under wraps, seventeen-year-old Billy Bloom, a drag queen, decides the only way to become fabulous again is to run for Homecoming Queen at his elite, private school near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
by Andreas Steinhöfel
As he works through his often difficult relationships with his single mother, distant twin sister, his first boyfriend, and an odd assortment of friends, a teenage boy learns about the wounds and healing brought by love.
PARROTFISH
by Ellen Wittlinger
Grady, a transgendered high school student, yearns for acceptance by his classmates and family as he struggles to adjust to his new identity as a male.
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TRANSPARENT: LOVE, FAMILY, AND LIVING THE T WITH TRANSGENDER TEENAGERS
by Cris Beam
Four transgendered girls share their world with a volunteer in a Los Angeles school for gay and transgender students.
FUN HOME: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC
by Alison Bechdel
Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and funny, readers are drawn into a daughters complex yearning for her father. Apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books.
QUEEN OF THE ODDBALLS: AND OTHER TRUE STORIES FROM A LIFE UNACCORDING TO PLAN
by Hillary
Carlip
An adventurous young woman defies all the conventions of her star-studded yet ordinary Los Angeles life in wonderfully unexpected ways in this offbeat, coming-of-age memoir.
THE HEART HAS ITS REASONS: YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE WITH GAY/LESBIAN/QUEER CONTENT, 1969-2004
by Michael
Cart and Christine A. Jenkins
Society does not make it easy for young people, regardless of their sexual orientation, to find accurate, nonjudgmental information about homosexuality. It makes it even more difficult for young homosexuals to find positive role models in fiction either written or published expressly for them or - if published for adults - relevant to them and their lives. This book examines these issues and critically evaluates the body of literature published for young adults that offers homosexual themes and characters.
THE FULL SPECTRUM: A NEW GENERATION OF WRITING ABOUT GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, QUESTIONING, AND OTHER IDENTITIES
edited by David Levithan and Billy Merrill
This one-of-a-kind collection contains original poems, essays, and stories by young adults in their teens and early 20s—gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight, transitioning, and questioning—on a variety of subjects: coming out, family, friendship, religion/faith, first kisses, break-ups, and many others.
HEAR ME OUT: TRUE STORIES OF TEENS EDUCATING AND CONFRONTING HOMOPHOBIA: A PROJECT OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF TORONTO
edited by Frances Rooney
Twenty teens from a variety of social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds give personal accounts of gay, lesbian, queer, transgender, transsexual and questioning young-adult experiences.
OUT LAW: WHAT LGBT YOUTH SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THEIR LEGAL RIGHTS
by Lisa Keen
After expertly guiding readers through a brief, easily digestible history of gay legislation, Keen empowers young gay people to not only know what their rights are but to stand up for them—whether facing threats or harassment from police, a teacher or a kid at school.
THE WHOLE WORLD WAS WATCHING: LIVING IN THE LIGHT OF MATTHEW SHEPARD
by Romaine
Patterson with Patrick Hinds
After young gay Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyoming, the author of this book formed a group of “angels” who surrounded the bigoted Fred Phelps when he and a small group picketed outside the killer’s trial.
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