Ungifted

Korman, Gordon. Ungifted. Balzer + Bray, 2012.

This book is hilarious along the lines of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda and The Wednesday Wars. Donovan is an 8th grader with what the school counselor calls "poor impulse control." He does a lot of crazy things without thinking about the consequences, which is why he smacked the school's statue of Atlas with a stick, which caused the rusted bolt to fall off, which caused the globe Atlas was holding to roll down the hill into the gym, causing thousands of dollars in damage. After the incident, Donovan is accidentally sent to the district's academy for gifted students, and hilarity ensues.

This book would make an excellent read aloud book for a class. The characters are likable and entertaining, and there are enough of Donovan's hijinx sprinkled throughout the book to keep even a reluctant reader interested. I am going to book talk this one to my students, and I'm hoping to get the Wimpy Kid fans interested, which might help them to expand their palette.

Recommended for: tweens, middle grade
Red Flags: a couple of minor violent scenes involving a school dance where a fight breaks out as well as a robotics competition where a child smashes a chair onto a robot's head.
Overall Rating: 5/5 stars

The Summer Experiment

Pelletier, Cathie. The Summer Experiment. Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2014.

This book is a good read-alike for My Mixed-Up Berry Blue Summer or Bluffton. It takes place in Maine during the summer, and two kids are trying to get abducted by a spaceship for their science project. In between, not much else happens. The pace is pretty slow, but I could see this book being popular with girls who are finally literate enough to read chapter books on their own. I won't be getting this book for my library, but if I worked in an elementary school, I might.

Recommended for: middle grade
Red Flags:none
Overall Rating: 3/5 stars

Pink

Wilkinson, Lili. Pink. HarperTeen, 2011.

Ava has very progressive, very supportive parents who let her call them by their first names and threw a coming out party for her when she told them that she's a lesbian. She also has a girlfriend who is very anti-establishment and enjoys wearing all black and reading obscure literary texts.

But Ava isn't sure she wants all of this anymore. So she gets a scholarship to an elite private school and goes to school in a pink sweater, not telling anyone that she's a lesbian and hoping to be "normal" for a change. Of course, all of these plans blow up in her face and she ends up picking up the pieces and righting wrongs and trying to figure out what she is.

This was a surprisingly good book. I enjoyed following Ava's self-discovery and appreciated what her friends did for her. I felt like the story had a good, satisfying ending. I would put a copy of this book in my library, and may still do so if I can find one for cheap/free.

Recommended for: fans of chick lit, theater nerds, fans of LGBTQ+ lit
Red Flags: lots of drinking, Ava's girlfriend smokes, Ava almost has sex with a boy who then complains that he is a virgin, language
Overall Rating: 5/5 stars

Golden Boy

Tarttelin, Abigail. Golden Boy. Atria Books, 2013. 

Max is intersex. Max is raped by a childhood friend around page 10 of this book. Max tells no one, goes to the doctor to get the morning after pill and STD testing. Then Max figures out that he's pregnant b/c he vomited after he took the pill so it never got a chance to terminate his pregnancy. He has to tell his parents. The rest of the book is Max dealing with the trauma of rape as well as trying to navigate difficult gender decisions as well as learning what his parents had decided to do when he was born, etc.

This book is told from multiple viewpoints, and it reads a bit like a Jodi Picoult book, except for the very graphic rape scene at the beginning of the book. For that reason alone, I recommend extreme caution when reading, especially if you are a rape survivor. Otherwise, this is an okay book, and it does feature an intersex character, which is fairly unusual even in LGBT literature. I will NOT be putting this book in my junior high library, nor would I likely recommend it to teens, but it's a good book to have in a public library's adult collection.

Recommended for: adults, older teens

Red Flags: Graphic rape scene

Overall Rating: 3/5 stars

Grasshopper Jungle

Smith, Andrew. Grasshopper Jungle. Dutton Juvenile, 2014.

A teen boy living in a small town in Iowa tells the story of his discovery that he might possibly be bisexual. Meanwhile, a virus is accidentally unleashed in his town, turning the inhabitants into giant, hungry, horny grasshoppers. Interspersed between his thoughts about how much he wants to have sex with his girlfriend and his best friend are tales of his great-great grandfather's emigration to the United States.

This story does not flow well, and the eponymous grasshoppers barely appear until the last third or so of the book. This book is a trip through a drug-addled horny teen boy's brain, and it's not a pleasant journey. I would avoid this book; there are much better science fiction books featuring LGBT characters.

Recommended for: adults

Red Flags: violence, sex, language

Overall Rating: 1/5 stars