A weak offering whose readership is unclear.
A gathering of reflections, meant to inspire and challenge teen readers, by a broad range of authors who address how the choices you make affect your humanity.
Editor Carlson-Hijuelos has selected short pieces by 30 contributors, including Joseph Bruchac, Pat Conroy, Gary Soto, Alexandra Stoddard, George Washington, Mario Cuomo, Anna Quindlen, and Timothy Egan. The introductory author’s note details Carlson-Hijuelos’ goals in selecting writings that speak to the challenges of being human given life’s uncertainties. Most of the brief entries are a couple of pages in length, but some are as short as a single paragraph. In some, identity—race, gender, culture, sexuality—is present as a subject for reflection. Even for an anthology, where variability in quality is to be expected, there is remarkable inconsistency here; some of the writing is strong and correlates closely with the stated themes, while other works are weaker, and their inclusion is puzzling. (The majority of entries are excerpts from previously published works.) This collection also includes very few authors who write for young adults or whose names will be instantly recognizable to teen readers, which may lessen the appeal for its intended audience, particularly given the array of similar works available.
A weak offering whose readership is unclear. (contributor bios, editor’s note) (Anthology. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4814-1975-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be.
An exuberant guide to LGBT life takes the stance that “being L or G or B or T or * is SUPER FUN.”
Speaking with candor, humor, and enthusiasm, Dawson addresses topics from coming out to sexually transmitted infections to sex apps. With irreverent chapter titles like “Stereotypes Are Poo” and a chatty narrative voice, the tone is largely upbeat, though the author also touches on “some MEGA-SAD FACE topics” like discrimination. Easily readable tables and humorous cartoons further liven up the presentation. To add more perspectives, segments from interviewees who represent areas of the LGBT spectrum not represented by the author himself are also included. Chapters on sex and apps like Grindr are helpfully matter-of-fact, and readers hear from people who choose casual sex as well as those who prefer emotionally intimate relationships. The book is a U.K. import, and while U.S.–based readers shouldn’t have much trouble understanding Briticisms like “fancy” or “shag,” some of the anti-discrimination laws referenced won’t apply. More troubling, the book’s efforts to support transgender readers are undermined by persistent, thoughtless affirmations that biology really is destiny—for instance, when the author debunks the myth that “gay men are ‘girls’ ” with a jokey “Penis? Check! Yup, gay men are, in fact, male.”
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be. (glossary, resources) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-1782-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys.
The acclaimed author of Between the World and Me (2015) reflects on the family and community that shaped him in this adaptation of his 2008 adult memoir of the same name.
Growing up in Baltimore in the ’80s, Coates was a dreamer, all “cupcakes and comic books at the core.” He was also heavily influenced by “the New York noise” of mid-to-late-1980s hip-hop. Not surprisingly then, his prose takes on an infectious hip-hop poetic–meets–medieval folklore aesthetic, as in this description of his neighborhood’s crew: “Walbrook Junction ran everything, until they met North and Pulaski, who, craven and honorless, would punk you right in front of your girl.” But it is Coates’ father—a former Black Panther and Afrocentric publisher—who looms largest in his journey to manhood. In a community where their peers were fatherless, Coates and his six siblings viewed their father as flawed but with the “aura of a prophet.” He understood how Black boys could get caught in the “crosshairs of the world” and was determined to save his. Coates revisits his relationships with his father, his swaggering older brother, and his peers. The result will draw in young adult readers while retaining all of the heart of the original.
A beautiful meditation on the tender, fraught interior lives of Black boys. (maps, family tree) (Memoir. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984894-03-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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