DANDELION TRAVELS

Over the course of a summer spent away from home, a gay Black teen is able to stop hiding his truths.

At school, Eric Wallace has been perceived as “the Angry Black Man” ever since he defended another queer student from a bully. When he is enraged, he feels overwhelmed and out of control. Around Andrea and Xavier, his friends who are very much in love with each other, Eric is haunted by a longing for Xavier that is fed by a memory of the night when they kissed. At home, Eric hides his emotions, sexuality, desire for dresses, and uncertainty about God from his preacher father and interior designer mother and tries to be “man enough / to be their son.” But all his efforts to hide and pretend fall apart when he witnesses his father’s infidelity. With Andrea and Xavier, Eric flies to Los Angeles, where he finds healing in the ocean, the possibility of new love, reckoning with himself, and unleashing his anger toward his father. This verse novel uses spare text in a large font with plenty of white space surrounding it to convey heavy, nuanced thoughts and emotions concerning identity, relationships, and coming-of-age. What the verse lacks in lyricism and rhythm, it makes up for in authentic and surprising content: The sparsely drawn characters feel alive on the page despite the simplicity of the poems.

A strong, emotionally complex choice for reluctant readers.