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How They Met and Other Stories
CCBC Review:
Many of the 18 short stories in this collection are from Valentine’s Day stories David Levithan has been writing since high school, including “A Romantic Inclination,” a story he started in his physics class at age sixteen; “Memory Dance,” written a year later when he was a senior; and “The escalator, a love story,” written when he was in college. Five stories in How They Met have been previously published in other collections, and others were written just for this volume. Each story deals with romantic love, particularly the giddy sort of love that defines so much of adolescence. Half of the stories feature gay main characters falling in and out of love, and Levithan excels at these. His well-rounded characters are shown with both depth and humor, and when their families are added to the mix, as they are in “Princes” and “What a Song Can Do,” the result is nothing short of brilliant. In “Princes” an 18-year-old boy comes out to his family by announcing that he has a boyfriend he wants to bring to his brother’s Bar Mitzvah. More than anything, he means to shock the family. Instead, his family – and particularly his younger brother – shocks him with their acceptance. In “What a Song Can Do,” a love-sick teenage song writer performs in public for the first time, thinking he’s singing a song he wrote about the less-than-perfect relationship he has with his boyfriend. He realizes mid-song that he’s actually singing to the parents he’s grown away from but still loves. Whether the characters are straight or gay, all of the stories are ultimately about the same things: What attracts one person to another? What miracle of chance brought them together? And, as the author first mused as a sixteen-year-old in a high school physics class: “After the initial impulse, would the momentum remain constant?” ©2008 Cooperative Children's Book Center
CCBC Age Recommendation: Age 13 and older
Age Range:
Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13)
Grades 9-12 (Age 14 and older)
Format:
Short Stories
Subjects:
Gays
Lesbians
LGBTQ+ Persons
Love and Romance
Diversity subject:
Jewish
LGBTQ Character/Topic
Publisher:
Alfred A. Knopf
Publish Year: 2008
Pages: 244
ISBN: 9780848865
CCBC Location: Fiction, Levithan