From: Bria Rewey <bsrewey>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:04:46 -0700 (PDT)

I've been meaning to join in on this discussion for the past two weeks but I was busy with the end of the school year. Now that it's over (big smile!) I finally have some time to add some thoughts.

I am a librarian at a middle school on a U.S. Air Force Base in Germany. There are many 8th grade girls at the school who have read books with GLBT characters in them, mostly because I recommended them (and they in turn recommend them to their friends). I have never once had a student come back to me and say "I can't believe you told me to read this book...that lifestyle is wrong." (or something similar.) The only times we ever really end up talking about the homosexuality issues in the books is when they wanted one of the characters to end up with the homosexual character. The two books that jump to mind are "True Believer" by Virginia Euwer Wolff and "Hard Love" by Ellen Wittlinger. In both cases the students will come back to me and say that they really wanted the straight and gay characters to end up together. But they never say anything bad about the fact that the characters are homosexual, they're just disappointed that they didn't turn into these wonderful love stories.

What I really appreciate about recent YA literature involving GLBT characters is that homosexuality doesn't play a central roll in a lot of the books. It's just something that's a part of the book and it isn't analyzed too closely or treated as taboo or different. Examples of these types of books are
"Gingerbread" by Rachel Cohen and "Razzle" by Ellen Wittlinger.

At my previous school I had high school students so I could be a little 'edgier' with what was in the library (although I'm definitely cutting it close with some of my selections for a middle school library, especially since it's on a military base!) At the high school I had "Annie on My Mind" by Nancy Garden and "Deliver us from Evie" by M.E. Kerr on the shelves. These books are much more focused on the homosexuality issue so I was never comfortable recommending them to students. I had them in the library but I don't think they ever got checked out. In retrospect I think if I would have recommended
"Deliver Us From Evie" to the right students they would have liked it because it was told from the point of view of the brother. I'd like to hear from other high school librarians...do you recommend these books to students? (For the record, I would feel completely comfortable recommending them to students if I was a public librarian.)

I truly believe that teens today are so much more accepting of homosexuality. I think so much of this acceptance comes from mass media. They see TV shows such as Will and Grace and think nothing of it. And I think it will only get better. I believe that some day high school society will really be like the high school in "Boy Meets Boy" by David Levithan...where sexual preference becomes pretty much a non-issue. At least I hope so!

That's all I have for right now. Because so much of YA literature with GLBT characters is written for high school students, not middle school students, I don't get to read as much of it as I would like. Hopefully I can read some of the titles that have been mentioned in the past two weeks on CCBC-Net. Thanks to everyone for an interesting discussion!

********************** Brianna Rewey Bitburg Middle School Bitburg, Germany
**********************

"Surround kids with interesting reading material and encourage them to read it, and the results are nothing short of literacy." --John Scudder


                
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Received on Thu 17 Jun 2004 03:04:46 PM CDT