Boy Meets Boy

Rating:
Summary: How do I get to this town?!?!
Review: Levithan's simple and engaging writing style helps the story flow whimsically. The story itself is really quite standard, save the twist of being a "gay teen story." With the lack of politics, drugs, violence, and heartwrenching drama BMB is a thouroughly enjoyable and light read!

Rating:
Summary: Boy meets Boy...oh boy!
Review: Paul is a high school sophomore who's gay. But that's no big deal, not to him or other students or his parents. In fact, it's been something that he and everybody else have known since Paul was in kindergarten. His town and his high school are places where everyone is free to be themselves. The star football quarter back is a drag queen and the cheerleaders all ride Harleys. Homophobia in a non-issue in this book, but that doesn't mean that life is perfect. Paul meets Noah in a bookstore and sparks fly. The two start dating and everything is heading in the right direction until Paul's ex, Kyle, reenters the picture. Kyle treated Paul horribly in the breakup and hasn't talked to him since. Now it seems that he is trying to make amends, and Paul allows himself to be pulled into Kyle's world of confusion. The result is detrimental to Noah and Paul's relationship. In the meantime other parts of Paul's life start falling apart. He gets into a fight with his best friend Joni and the two are no longer on speaking terms. His other best friend Tony is being held under lock and key by his parents who refuse to accept their son's sexuality; and suddenly it seems that everyone is wanting something from Paul. After some wise words from his friend Tony, Paul sets out to win back Noah and makes some important realizations in his life.

The best part of this book is how Levithan chose to make homosexuality a non-issue. Tony's parents are the exception rather than being the norm . The lack of homophobia doesn't mean all the characters are friends, it just means that life goes on as normal but everyone feels free to be who they are. This is one of the most important gay books to come along in awhile. (...)

Rating:
Summary: Radiant pop song romance
Review: Paul is a sophomore at a high school where the star quarterback is also a drag queen called Infinite Darlene. Being gay is so a part of this world that it's unnecessary to mention it almost. When Paul first notices Noah, he knows it's going to be huge. Unfortunately Paul's exboyfriend Kyle, who went on to date girls, has decided to drift back into Paul's life. Joni, Paul, and Tony have always been best friends, but things begin to change when Joni begins dating a football player. And Tony's ultra-conservative parents squash his extracurricular activities. Paul makes a big mistake and Noah turns his back on him. How can he make things right again, how can Paul rekindle the magic they all shared? Inspired by Patty Griffin's song "Tony", "Boy Meets Boy" is an extravagant love story that reconfigures the entire world to one filled with hope, love, cosmic fabulousness, and music. This book is a celebration of love that should not be missed.

Rating:
Summary: A Different Place, a Different Town, and Different Time.
Review: Pure and simple this book is a fantasy book. It is a book that takes every gay or lesbian "what-if-my-school-was-like" and rolls it all up into one very engaging and humourus story.

In the center of everything there is 15-year-old Paul. Has has known that he was gay every since kindergarden when his teacher told him so. But where Paul lives it is not only acceptable to be gay, but most of the town is. As we follow Paul throughout the turbulent month of November, he takes as on an incredible journey of friendship, self-discovery, and acceptance.

This book reads like Gilmore Girls on Steroids... At one moment, you can't help but to drop the book because you are laughing so hard, the next moment your face turns all red and your excited, and the next page your starting to tear up. The characters are real, yet they may feel like cartoons at times: Infinite Darlene ('nuf said if you read the book).

This is a wonderful book, and a great read for anybody. But I do have to tell that it is a fantasy... it is what people would hope the world will be like, but to contrast this "whimsical" place (as the author discribes it), there is a neighboring town, and is not very libral, and is where much of the acceptance plays a part.

Rating:
Summary: What A Wonderful Book!
Review: Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Remember those tiny valentine candies with words on them? Three of those candy hearts with "boy" "meets" "boy" on them adorn the cover of David Levithan's gentle, sweet novel about Paul, a gay sophomore in high school and his friends. You can hardly call this a coming out novel since Paul, who is also the narrator, was outed by his kindergarten teacher when she wrote on his report card: "Paul is definitely gay and has very good sense of self." He ran for and was elected class president in the third grade on an openly gay ticket. In eighth grade Paul saw PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT, and he met his good friend Tony at the Strand Book Store as they both were looking for a used copy of THE LOST LANGUAGE OF CRANES. One of Paul's friends in high school is a drag queen/homecoming queen/star quarterback who is faced with the real dilemma of how the homecoming queen can introduce herself/himself as quarterback at a pep rally. Cheerleaders ride motorcycles. Because of the National Boy Scouts' stand on gays, the local chapter has disbanded and is now an organization called "Joy Scouts." P-FLAG is more important than the PTA. The land of Oz? Maybe. Tony's parents may come as close to being wicked witches as anyone in this almost perfect world the author creates since they are fundamentalists who only let him study with Paul in their kitchen in plain sight of them.

The shy Mr. Levithan-- even when you go to his website, you don't learn a lot about him-- has written a seamless beautiful novel about a lucky, well-adjusted gay adolescent. In describing something he saw on television about a teen football player who had died in an auto accident, Paul remembers that some of his "big hulking" friends were in tears because they had loved him so much. "I started crying, too, and I wondered if these guys had told the football player they loved him while he was alive, or whether it was only with death that this strange word, love, could be used. I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them." Wouldn't a son like that warm any parent's heart?

The book closes-- and I have not given away the plot by any means-- with Paul thinking to himself: "What a wonderful world." What a wonderful book!

Rating:
Summary: lighthearted snooze
Review: The immediate feel to this book is warmth and joy. You love all the fun, interesting characters and how life is grand. Then after about 50 pages, that wears off. The remainder is boy loves boy drivel for about 150 pages that borders on boring. Though nice to see an optimistic gay teen novel, this one was hard to finish.

Rating:
Summary: The best book about young gay men written for youth!
Review: There is a tiny revolution occuring within the world of young adult literature right now. I don't know if the publishers see a market for queer themes, or if they are opening their minds and eyes to writers who have long awaited a chance to write stories of everyday queer youth. Other books to check out are "Rainbow Boys" and its sequel, "Rainbow High," and "Geography Club."
"Boy Meets Boy," however, does not tell a story of everyday queer youth, but rather, outstanding queer youth. The characters in this book are unique and multi-faceted, make idiotic decisions after brilliant ones, only to learn after loops and hurdles that they are only and wonderfully human, and perhaps the only and wonderful validation for that is their own growth.
The protagonist is Paul, a young man who was told by his kindergarten teacher that he is in fact gay. Actually, he learns this through an evaluation left carelessly on her desk. Fortunately, he is blessed with a town that disbanded their local boyscouts troop after the organization addresses their discrimination policy. Instead they they form their own "joy scouts."
One of the most refreshing things about this book is that it portrays situations and circumstances that are blessedly unrealistic. That is to say, the queer characters do not suffer from gay-bashing, unsafe sex or any of the other demons that can surface when coming out in today's world.
Probably the most glaring example of this fantasy is Paul's dear friend, Infinite Darlene, the trans male to female star quarterback and homecoming queen. When I read this, my jaw dropped and I gave a little clap in the library. Although, it is unfortunate that the author refers to Darlene as a drag queen throughout the book, when the other description is clearly identifying a transgendered youth. That is my only critisism of this otherwise splendid book.
The over-simplified title gives the bare bones of this book. Paul meets a boy, named Noah. They fall in love. It's magical and heart-tugging until Kyle, Paul's confused ex, tries to re-enter his life. Paul, being the lovable heart he is, gives much sympathy, and perhaps a little too much. Meanwhile, Paul's best friend Jodi goes after the man who had fallen in love with Infinite Darlene, who in turn was not interested, seeing warning signs of stalker behavior. Paul, Darlene and Tony, the third piece to the Paul/Jodi/Tony friendship, disapprove, as does Jodi's ex, who begins to cry upon Paul's shoulder, who of course is just trying to be in love with Noah in the first place. Insanity ensues.
Imagine a world where a queer youth can crush, pine, lust and whine about loves in the hallways of public schools just as straight youth, and you have the wonderful and wise "Boy Meets Boy."

Rating:
Summary: A blending of Utopian Fiction with Teenage Realism
Review: This book does something that other books do not: it presents a world that certainly does NOT currently exist (drag queen as star quarterback? a school where homosexuality and bisexuality are accepted as "duh"?) and then proceeds to make you believe in it. Or, at least, it makes you ask (as does all good utopian fiction): Why shouldn't it exist?

Like other utopian novels, too, next to the utopian world there is a dystopian (meaning "bad") world, reminding us of what is at stake. That dystopian world is the world of Tony, the gay son of strongly religious parents, and who attends a different school. Thanks to a chance meeting on a train, Tony gets to experience, once in a while, the utopian world where Paul and Infinite Darlene (the drag queen quarterback) live. That's enough to give him--and the readers--hope for the future.

Levithan, the author, offers an optimistic ending, suggesting that the utopian realities will eventually infect (in a good way) the dystopian.

Finally, it must be said that the utopian world here is far from perfect! Paul and the others still have essentially human pains and sufferings to live through. The point is this: what kind of world should we have--should teenagers have--so that everyone can get through those basic human pains (first crushes, first kiss, first sex, first ex'es, etc.) with the least amount of extraneous burdens thrown in? Levithan writes about this essential world of relational struggle and growth extremely well.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as I wanted it to be
Review: This book is funny and sweet and definitely worth a read, but I couldn't like it as much as I wanted to. The plot is thin and the setting so fantastical it's almost alienating. It winds up being a colorful fairy tale, but if you're looking for something that speaks to the experience of gay teenagers, look elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Cute!
Review: This book is just so cute. It's like this fictional, utopian, gay world, where gays aren't treated any differently, have the same problems, and have the same situations as other people. It's so cute, and the book makes you laugh, and just smile.