Scan barcode
razishiri's review
2.0
I read the title story, "Am I Blue?", for English last year and loved it. Unfortunantly as much as I like the topic, none of the other stories really lived up to their predessesor. Still worth a read if only for the first story and the notes by each author.
mlangman's review
3.0
I read this when I taught in Philadelphia, as the first short story in the anthology, "Am I Blue?" is required reading for 9th graders in Philly. I read it again (in its entirety this time) for my YA/Adolescent Lit Course. It's hard to give a number of stars to an anthology like this because some stories I liked much better than others and I felt that some really hit the mark, while others were okay. On the whole though, I enjoyed the stories. I also think that the messages they send about being gay (or friends with someone who is gay, related to someone who is gay, exploring your sexuality, etc.) are very important and need to be made available to more teens and pre-teens.
brogan7's review
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
What strikes me about this collection is how wholesome it is...was the world so different in 1994 (publication date) because there was no internet? The kids in these stories are exploring identity and sexuality, but they don't seem as traumatized or as wild as the average teenager in 2022. Who would have thought the nineties could look that innocent?!
mixxie67's review
3.0
A mixed bag of short story offerings by popular YA authors. I haven't read this in awhile but a quick glance at an Amazon description reminded me that I particularly liked Francesca Lia Block's story of a boy coming out to his girl friend. It's an important addition to any school library.
choirqueer's review
3.0
I really thought I had read this before, and I remembered a few of the stories but others were definitely brand-new to me. This book was clearly written before the #OwnVoices movement and it was frustrating how many of the stories not only seemed to be written by cis/straight people but also centered cis/straight characters and their feelings and the lack of trans representation. Nonetheless, some good stuff in here, and worth reading even just for the sake of comparison to more contemporary anthologies.
bookalchemist's review
3.0
This is a difficult book to review; I have trouble putting aside what I know and where we are now (as my Anglo-Saxon lit professor would put it, my modern biases), and it changes the impact of the stories I think. In the 90s when this published, this book was something of a unique creature and may have made some waves for its existence, so openly talking about what LGBTQIA+ teens and children face in daily life, the inner and outer struggles. Today, it reads like a piece of queer history, and it's so very sad but hopeful. The kind of fiction featuring characters in this community then were about isolation, the burden of loneliness and unhappiness, and focused on the act of coming out. Now, coming out is just the hurdle before trying to figure out dating, navigating life as a trans person in a workplace, or other bigger struggles. Looking at this book now, in some ways it's a little insulting or exclusionary, but that helps show how far we've come. Books can be used as history even when they aren't nonfiction, and not all works of fiction are worth reading just for the content alone (look at booklists for middle and high schools). I think this might be one of those.
meredithlinks's review
4.0
I read this for my LGBTQ Lit class. Overall I enjoyed it. There were a few short stories I didn't like, but there were some very good ones. My favorite was the story the book gets its namesake from, Am I Blue?. It was interesting hearing the perspective of someone that is gay or someone they know is gay.
entamewitchlulu's review
3.0
I can tell by reading this that this was a very important book for its time, but reading it from the future, I can also tell I've been really spoiled when it comes to queer lit.
Most of the stories in here are far too short to truly develop any characters or plots, making them somewhat unsatisfying, which is a problem I have with a lot of anthologies from this era (or anthologies in general, to be honest...finding a really good one that I really enjoy is very hard for me).
It's great to see how far we've come nowadays with queer literature, so for history's sake I think this is worth giving a read. Fair warning, though, is is rife with slurs, and in the first story alone there is a "fairy godfather" character who became a fairy godfather because he was murdered in a gay hate crime, so beware of potentially triggering topics.
Most of the stories in here are far too short to truly develop any characters or plots, making them somewhat unsatisfying, which is a problem I have with a lot of anthologies from this era (or anthologies in general, to be honest...finding a really good one that I really enjoy is very hard for me).
It's great to see how far we've come nowadays with queer literature, so for history's sake I think this is worth giving a read. Fair warning, though, is is rife with slurs, and in the first story alone there is a "fairy godfather" character who became a fairy godfather because he was murdered in a gay hate crime, so beware of potentially triggering topics.
taratearex's review
5.0
Young adult short stories. at the time i probably would have said it changed my life. the best story is clearly the story where the book gets it's name. i think i read this in 8th grade. maybe 9th
rainbowbookworm's review
5.0
One of the first collections of GLBT stories for young adults, the short stories are moving, entertaining, and funny.