This is brightly colored, lively adaptation of the novel of the same name (which I read and loved over the summer). I love Juliet's character design and the warm and energy of the color palette. I miss the pieces of her internal narration which had to be cut, and by necessity this is a slightly less complex version of the story. But it's a very faithful adaptation and I hope it pulls in new readers!

I got this book in advance of it's August release date because I am one of the contributors :) It's a wonderful collection of short pieces, most previously published on The Nib, a few of which were commissioned new for this volume. I had read probably half of them or so in the past, but the ones that stood out on this pass included Hazel Newlevant's "Queer Uprisings Before Stonewall"; "Queerness has always been part of life in the middle east" by an anonymous author; "Decolonizing Queerness in the Philippines"by Trindad Escobar; "When You're Invisible in Pop Culture" by Bianca Xunise and Sage Coffey; "The Homophobic Hysteria of the Lavender Scare" by Kazimir Lee and Dorian Alexander; "Livejournal Made Me Gay" by JB Brager; "It's all for the Breast" by Alexis Sudgen; "Witch Camp" by Melanie Gillman; "The American Revolution's Greatest Leader was Openly Gay" by Josh Trujillo and Levi Hastings; and "The Wonderfully Queer World of Moomin" by Mady G, who also illustrated the beautiful cover.

This is a fantastic memoir. I listened to it as an audiobook on the strength of knowing only that Megan Rapinoe is queer and seemed cool. She is much more than that. She's had over a decade long career of playing at the very highest level of women's soccer, winning multiple world championships. Along the way she has been passionately advocating for acceptance of LGBTQ athletes, equal pay for women, and for Black Lives Matter. She is four years older than I am, so perhaps it isn't surprising that she had her political awakening earlier than I did. It's such a fierce joy to hear her talk about standing up for what she believes in over and over and over again.

I found the early childhood section of this memoir a little be repetitive, but it found its stride in the teenage years. I really appreciated the author's honesty especially in writing about the more challenging themes. They were balanced out with some really joyful family stories. I haven't read a book for a young adult audience like this before, and I'm glad it exists now!

Aiden has a rough home life, and has been constantly teased at his Catholic elementary school, but he finds a rhythm and a group of friends in the Boy Scouts. It's the summer before his first year of high school and he's afraid of standing out and getting targeted by even larger bullies. He's short, pudgy, Filipino and deeply closeted. At summer camp he wrestles with name-calling and a crush he won't admit. But he also digs down and finds a growing well of self-confidence and the ability to stand up for himself. I personally have a hard time relating to queer stories with strong religious themes, but I'm really glad to see this book out in the world. The artwork is simple and effective, with some really beautiful double page spreads.

I had no idea how Hank Green was going to follow up the first book in this set, which I thought was a stand alone at the time. I was very impressed at how he was able to develop a new level of complexity with the alien threat, yet never lose track of what made the first book interesting: that it was a story about a group of friends trying to figure out how to use their huge social impact for good. Green is very knowledgeable about things such as becoming famous for a niche thing and growing a huge social media following. These are major threads of the story, but so are the relations of human brains to computers, the future of the internet, and the ways in which communications technology can unite or divide us. A satisfying sequel.

This one didn't capture me as much as the first one for some reason. I like the set up, and the main character, but I think the individual Yokia stories weren't quite as sweet as in book one.

A collection of short stories about a four year old growing up in a small town in Japan in the early 1980s. Nori's parents work full time so she's raised primarily be her grandmother. She attends pre-school, follows stranger's dogs into parks, finds frogs in the ditch, dances with the bats that come into house. In one chapter Nori and her grandmother fly to Hawaii and stay with a Japanese family bed and breakfast, and Nori makes friends with the daughter of the family and learns to swim. The stories are domestic, sweet, whimsical, drawn in a loose brush pen.