Drama

In class on Monday, we discussed briefly how the cover and description of the book don’t really make sense with the book. Although the book focuses heavily on Jesse and Justin’s experience being queer in middle school, you wouldn’t know it from just looking at the cover or the back of the book. 

After our discussion on Monday and the quotes that were shared talking about the books editors and publishers my gut tells me this was done just to make in more palatable to homophobic parents who don’t even want to see it on store shelves. But I do hold onto a little bit of hope that the choice was made with at least some thought about how it could be helpful to LGBT youth. Whether the choice to initially disguise the queer romances inside was done intentionally or not, I do think that especially for children’s books and books for young adults it can make them more accessible to closeted youth. This book would have never made it on to the reading list at my school. And although this isn’t a perfect example (since it’s way easier to flip through a book of images and see something “inappropriate for young readers”) books that don’t mention that they focus on LGBT characters on the cover/back would have been easy to slip by my parents at the bookstore or library when they were just happy to see me reading for fun. 

I’d love to live in a world where everyone feels safe and allowed to be themselves, but we aren’t there yet. Until then, I think that books like this and many of the LGBT YA books coming out right now are a great resource. Some examples that I can think of are If We Were Villains, The City in the Middle of the Night, andThe Starless Sea but although I can’t find any of the one’s I remember from when Tumblr was big I did find a list that was similar: https://madelinetodd.com/2021/08/13/undercover-lgbtq-books-for-closeted-readers/ I 

 

 




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