Representing the Rainbow in Young Adult Literature

Christine A. Jenkins is associate professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a PhD and MS in library and information studies and an MA in children’s literature. Jenkins is recipient of several teaching awards and has a decade of experience as a school librarian/media specialist. She is co-editor of the Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature (2011), and co-author (with Michael Cart) of Top 250 LGBTQ Books for Teens (2015). Michael Cart is a columnist and reviewer for ALA's Booklist magazine, and has also written countless articles that have appeared in The New York Times, Parents Magazine, American Libraries, School Library Journal, and elsewhere. The former president of both YALSA and ALAN, Cart is the recipient of the 2000 Grolier Award and the first recipient in 2008 of the YALSA/Greenwood Publishing Group Service to Young Adults Award. He appointed and chaired the Task Force that created the Michael L. Printz Award and subsequently chaired the 2006 Printz Committee. He is the author or editor of more than twenty books, including Young Adult Literature: From Romance to Realism, Third Edition (2016).Jenkins and Cart are co-authors of The Heart Has Its Reasons: Young Adult Literature with Gay/Lesbian/Queer Content, 1969-2004 (Scarecrow Press, 2006).

With this expanded, updated version of The Heart Has Its Reasons (CH, Sep'06, 44-0157), Jenkins (Univ. of Illinois) and Cart (reviewer and editor) present a thorough overview of fiction and nonfiction for and about LGBTQ+ young people, focusing on work in English mostly set in North America. In part 1, the authors provide a chronological survey of the fiction in six chapters, from gay-themed adult novels of the 1940s through YA fiction as recent as 2016. Each chapter sorts the literature reviewed into three broad categories: “Homosexual Visibility,” or stories about coming out; “Gay Assimilation,” stories that include LGBTQ+ characters whose orientation is not the focus of the plot; and “Queer Consciousness/Community.” Part 2 covers bisexual, transgender, and intersex inclusion; graphic novels; and nonfiction. Jenkins and Cart are, respectively, a lesbian and a gay man, and they are also engaging writers and discerning readers. Their enthusiasm for the literature is contagious. This book will make an excellent companion to Caren Town’s LGBTQ Young Adult Fiction: A Critical Survey, 1970s–2010s (CH, Dec'17, 55-1280). Town’s study delves more deeply into queer and literary theory, but the present volume describes and analyzes a longer list of books.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.