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QUESTION:book suggestions

Submitted by Anonymooose on Thu, 04/12/2007 - 4:40am
question / pregunta: 

Hi. I'm searching for books for my daughter (age 15). Literature or non-fiction with a radical or at least alternative outlook on relationships - love - sex.

Thank you.

Great site.

Answers

Answer posted by: laura

Another book you may want to look at is BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, edited by Lisa Jervis and Andi Ziesler. It includes an essay called "Ruby fruit Jungle Gym: An Annotated Bibliography of the Young Adult Novel." Many of the other essays in the collection might also be of interest. Bitch magazine itself might offer another avenue of exploration.

Answer posted by: shqippy

Thanks for your question! There are a few places I would begin. One is a book called Lesbian and Gay Voices, which is a bibliography of books for children & young adults. This link will show you the nearest libraries that have it: http://worldcat.org/oclc/43323679&referer=brief_results

Ditto for The Teen Reader's Advisor, which is more mainstream but appears to have a broad outlook. Chapter 14, for example, has these sections:
Chapter 14. Love, Sex, and Romance
A/ Classic Love, Sex, and Romance
A/ Bisexual/ Transgendered/ Questioning Teens
A/ Dating/ Crush
A/ Dating Violence/Rape
A/ First Love
A/ Gay Guys
A/ Lesbian Girls
A/ Unplanned Pregnancy/Abortion
B/ Resources: Additional Romance
See libraries that have it at http://worldcat.org/oclc/67383774&referer=brief_results

An online bibliography, while not geared toward the love/sex realm, is at http://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/children/bib/index.htm

I hope this is helpful. Please let us know how we can assist you further!

Answer posted by: Anonymooose

To add another option, you may wish to do some searching of your own in a periodical (which could be either in print or online) called "Alternative Press Index", which may be accessible through your local public library --you can search on the subject term "young adult literature" and limit results to "book reviews".

An example result is this list of teen books from Peacework magazine, which has a teen top 10

Also, you can try the booklist page on the "Library Teen Wiki" --an open-source encyclopedia devoted to teen librarianship, especially the feminist fiction list!
master index of booklists on the web