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The Vast Fields of Ordinary
Nick Burd
It's Dade's last summer at home, and things are pretty hopeless. He has a crappy job, a "boyfriend" who treats him like dirt, and his parents' marriage is falling apart. So when he meets and falls in love with the mysterious Alex Kincaid, Dade feels like he's finally experiencing true happiness. But when a tragedy shatters the final days of summer, he realizes he must face his future and learn how to move forward from his past.
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The Weight of a Thousand Feathers
Brian Conaghan
Seventeen-year-old Bobby Seed, the devoted but exhausted primary caregiver for his terminally-ill mother and difficult younger brother, finds respite in a support group and good friends, but must face his mother's impossible choice alone
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The White Swan Express
Elaine M. Aoki and Jean Davies Okimoto
Across North America, people in four different homes prepare for a special trip to China, while four baby girls in China await their new adoptive parents.
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The World of Normal Boys
K.M. Soehnlein
The time is the late 1970s -- an age of gas shortages, head shops, and Saturday Night Fever. The place, suburban New Jersey. At a time when the teenagers around him are coming of age, Robin MacKenzie is coming undone. While "normal boys" are into cars, sports, and bullying their classmates, Robin enjoys day trips to New York City with his elegant mother, spinning fantastic tales for her amusement in an intimate ritual he has come to love. He dutifully plays the role of the good son for his meat-and-potatoes father, even as his own mind is a jumble of sexual confusion and painful self-doubt. But everything changes in one horrifying instant, when a tragic accident wakes his family from their middle-American dream and plunges them into a spiral of slow destruction.
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They Both Die at the End
Adam Silvera
In a near-future New York City where a service alerts people on the day they will die, teenagers Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio meet using the Last Friend app and are faced with the challenge of living a lifetime on their End Day.
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This Book is Gay
James Dawson
Lesbian. Bisexual. Queer. Transgender. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU. There's a long-running joke that, after "coming out," a lesbian, gay guy, bisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and instruction manual. THIS IS THAT INSTRUCTION MANUAL. You're welcome. Inside you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask: from sex to politics, hooking up to stereotypes, coming out and more. This candid and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBT also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention illustrations.
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This Day in June
Gayle E. Pitman
A picture book illustrating a Pride parade. The endmatter serves as a primer on LGBT history and culture and explains the references made in the story.
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This is Kind of an Epic Love Story
Kheryn Callender
Budding screenwriter Nate, sixteen, finds his conviction that happy endings do not happen in real life sorely tested when his childhood best friend and crush, Oliver James Hernandez, moves back to town
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This Is My Family: A First Look At Same-Sex Parents
Pat Thomas
This new title in Barron's A First Look At series encourages kids of preschool through early school age to understand and overcome problems that might trouble them in social and family relationships. Written by an experienced psychotherapist and counselor on a level that is always understandable to younger children, this book seeks to promote positive interactions among children, parents, and teachers. Thoughtful text is supplemented with child-friendly color illustrations on every page. A two-page How to Use This Book section for parents and teachers appears at the back of each book. This is My Family takes a child's point of view in its discussion of same-sex marriage. Its message is intended both for children of gay or lesbian parents, as well as for the kids and parents of the children's friends and playmates.
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Three Pennies
Melanie Crowder
In San Francisco, eleven-year-old Marin desperately searches for her birthmother knowing time is running out before she is adopted, and discovers for the first time in her life what it feels like to be truly wanted by someone.
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Thursday with Helenna and Alex
Phylliss DelGreco, Jaclyn Roth, and Kathryn Silverio
In "Thursday with Helenna and Alex," Jessie has a play date with two of her best friends. As the children conduct an "archeological dig" in Helenna's backyard (with the energetic and hilarious help of Buddy, the dog), they uncover some surprising artifacts and discover the real key to their friendship. "Thursday with Helenna and Alex" is the fourth book in The Jessie Books series, which offers an inspiring story for each day of the week, featuring a precocious little girl who lives with her two moms in Queens, New York.
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Tillmon County Fire
Pamela Ehrenberg
In tiny Tillmon County, where it seems like nothing ever happens, a mysterious fire rocks the lives of the teenagers who live there. Who set the fire that night, and more importantly, who owns the reasons behind it? As the story unfolds, the lines between truth and fiction, motive and happenstance, guilt and innocence blur. This novel-in-stories is told sequentially in the voices of its disparate cast of characters: a frustrated adoptee, a gay teenager, a big-city kid who is new in town and wishes he were back in Manhattan, a pregnant store clerk, and a boy with autism who is more at the center of events than he imagines.
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Tilt
Ellen Hopkins
Three teens, connected by their parents' bad choices, tell in their own voices of their lives and loves as Shane finds his first boyfriend, Mikayla discovers that love can be pushed too far, and Harley loses herself in her quest for new experiences.
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Totally Joe
James Howe
As a school assignment, a thirteen-year-old boy writes an alphabiography--life from A to Z--and explores issues of friendship, family, school, and the challenges of being a gay teenager.
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Tricks (Tricks #1)
Ellen Hopkins
Five teenagers from different parts of the country. Three girls. Two guys. Four straight. One gay. Some rich. Some poor. Some from great families. Some with no one at all. All living their lives as best they can, but all searching…for freedom, safety, community, family, love. What they don’t expect, though, is all that can happen when those powerful little words “I love you” are said for all the wrong reasons.Five moving stories remain separate at first, then interweave to tell a larger, powerful story—a story about making choices, taking leaps of faith, falling down, and growing up. A story about kids figuring out what sex and love are all about, at all costs, while asking themselves, “Can I ever feel okay about myself?”
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True Letters from a Fictional Life
Kenneth Logan
If you asked anyone in his small Vermont town, they'd tell you the facts: James Liddell, star athlete, decent student, and sort-of boyfriend to cute, peppy Theresa, is a happy, funny, carefree guy. But whenever James sits down at his desk to write, he tells a different story. As he fills his drawers with letters to the people in his world -- letters he never intends to send -- he spills the truth: he's trying hard, but he just isn't into Theresa. It's his friend, a boy, who lingers in his thoughts. James's secret letters are his safe space -- but his truth can't stay hidden for long. Will he come clean to his parents, his teammates, and himself, or is he destined to live a life of fiction?
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Tuesday with Mommy and Pterodactyis
Phylliss DelGreco, Jaclyn Roth, and Kathryn Silverio
In "Tuesday with Mommy...and Pterodactyls," Jessie visits the big museum in the city and is completely shocked to see that real dinosaurs are much larger and more frightening than her dinosaur toys at home. With Mommy’s help, Jessie makes parallels between the dinosaurs and herself, and is able not only to overcome her fears, but also to soar with her favorites, the pterodactyls. "Tuesday with Mommy...and Pterodactyls" is the second book in The Jessie Books series, which offers an inspiring story for each day of the week, featuring a precocious little girl who lives with her two moms in Queens, New York.
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Two Boys Kissing
David Levithan
A chorus of men who died of AIDS observes and yearns to help a cross-section of today's gay teens who navigate new love, long-term relationships, coming out, self-acceptance, and more in a society that has changed in many ways.
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Two Dads: A Book About Adoption
Carolyn Robertson
Having two dads is double the fun! Many families are different. This family has two dads. A beautifully illustrated, affirming story of life with two dads, written from the perspective of their adopted child.
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Two Moms, the Zark, and Me
Johnny Valentine
A young child with two moms, a playful animal called a zark, and the narrow-minded McFinks all come together in this whimsical story that looks at just what a family is all about.
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Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath
Steven Goldman
Mitch, a shy and awkward high school junior, negotiates the difficult social situations he encounters, both with girls and with his best friend David, after David reveals to him that he is gay.
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Tyler Buckspan
Jere' M. Fishback
Fifteen-year-old Tyler Buckspan lives with his mom and grandmother in 1960s Cassadaga, a Florida community where spiritual "mediums" ply their trade. The mediums--Tyler's grandmother among them--read palms and tarot cards, conduct seances and speak with the dead. Tyler's a loner, a bookish boy with few interests, until his half-brother Devin, nineteen and a convicted arsonist, comes to live in Tyler's home. For years, Tyler has ignored his attraction to other boys. But with Devin in the house, Tyler can't deny his urges any longer. He falls hopelessly in love with his miscreant half-brother, and with the sport of basketball, once Devin teaches Tyler the finer points of the game. In a time when love between men was forbidden, even criminalized, can Tyler find the love he needs from another boy? And is Devin a person to be trusted? Is he truly clairvoyant, or simply a con artist playing Tyler and others for fools? What does Devin really know about a local murder? And can Tyler trust his own psychic twinges?
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Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain
Portia de Rossi
Known for her roles on the hit TV shows "Ally McBeal" and "Arrested Development," de Rossi delivers a revelatory and searing account of the years she spend secretly suffering from bulimia, all the while living under the glare of Hollywood's bright lights.
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Unbecoming
Jenny Downham
Life has just become very complicated for seventeen-year-old Katie; her father walked out a year ago, her mother is stressed out, her brother is a "special needs" teenager, and she is caring for the maternal grandmother she has never met, who is suffering from Alzheimer's--and Katie has a secret of her own that she cannot reveal.
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Unbroken
Marieke Nijkamp
This anthology explores disability in fictional tales told from the viewpoint of disabled characters, written by disabled creators. With stories in various genres about first loves, friendship, war, travel, and more, Unbroken will offer today's teen readers a glimpse into the lives of disabled people in the past, present, and future.