Kiss Number 8
Illustrator
Ellen T. Crenshaw
Publisher
First Second
Publication Year
2019
ISBN
9781250196934
Pages
299 pages
Genre
realism
Format
graphic novel
Item Type
Fiction
Annotation
Mads is pretty happy with her life. She goes to church with her family, and minor league baseball games with her dad. She goofs off with her best friend Cat, and has thus far managed to avoid getting kissed by Adam, the boy next door. It's everything she hoped high school would be... until all of a sudden, it's not. Her dad is hiding something big--so big it could tear her family apart. And that's just the beginning of her problems: Mads is starting to figure out that she doesn't want to kiss Adam... because the only person she wants to kiss is Cat. Just like that, Mad's tidy little life has gotten epically messy--and epically heartbreaking. And when your heart is broken, it takes more than an awkward, uncomfortable, tooth-clashing, friendship-ending kiss to put things right again. It takes a whole bunch of them.
Grade Level
9-12
Diversity Topics
Family Relationships; LGBTQ (Gender and Sexuality); Family member death; Step parent; Family violence; Bisexuality; Transgender; death of a grandparent; step mother; step grandmother; spousal abuse; abusive father; bisexual teenager; transgender grandparent; girl to boy
Main Character
female teenager
Race/Ethnicities
White
Family Formation
mother and father
LGBTQ+
bisexual female; transgender male
Keywords
kissing; coming of age; secrets; family history; baseball; friendship; music; Catholic school; transphobia; homophobia
Diversity Impact
direct
STARS Citation
Venable, Colleen AF, "Kiss Number 8" (2019). Diverse Families. 1798.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/diversefamilies/1798