Counseling Education Bibliotherapy Reading List: Sexual Orientation

This groundbreaking book, first published in 1982, is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. Of the author and the book, the Margaret A. Edwards Award committee said, "Nancy Garden has the distinction of being the first author for young adults to create a lesbian love story with a positive ending. Using a fluid, readable style, Garden opens a window through which readers can find courage to be true to themselves." The 25th Anniversary Edition features a full-length interview with the author by Kathleen T. Horning, Director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center. Ms. Garden answers such revealing questions as how she knew she was gay, why she wrote the book, censorship, and the book's impact on readers - then and now.

Openly gay sophomore Paul lives in a gay-friendly small town in New Jersey, where homosexuality, bisexuality, and being transgender is accepted and embraced. His best friends are Joni, who he has been best friends with since early childhood and who he came out to in second grade, and Tony, who is also gay and who lives in the (much less accepting) next town over with his strict religious parents. Chuck, a football player, is Joni's new boyfriend, who is confused by his relationship with Infinite Darlene, who used to be a boy named Daryl Heisenberg but who has blossomed since starting to cross-dress, and now is both the star quarterback and the homecoming queen. On a night out with Joni and Tony, listening to a friend play music in a bookstore, Paul meets Noah and is instantly enraptured. When rumors start to fly, and a kiss between two friends is mistaken for betrayal, Paul and his friends set out to prove his love to Noah over the course of seven days.

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When they meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the two loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special kind of friendship--the kind of friendship that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through their friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves--and about the kind of people they want to be.