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This text offers 6th - 12th grade ELA educators guided instructional approaches for including queer-themed young adult (YA) literature in the English language arts classroom. Chapters are authored by leading researchers and theorists in young adult literature, specifically queer-themed YA . Each chapter spotlights the reading of one queer-themed YA novel, and offer pre-, during-, and after reading activities that guide students to a deeper understanding of the content while increasing their literacy practices. While each chapter focuses on a specific queer-themed YA novel, readers will discover the many opportunities for cross-disciplinary study.

This article explores the graphic representation of queer adolescent sexuality on offer in the coming-of-age graphic novel Blue is the Warmest Color. This representation, read alongside object relations psychoanalysis and in terms of feminist sexuality education theorizing, invites adult readers to reconsider the ways in which we think of the relationship between girls, risk, and sexuality. I propose that in order to honor girls’ sexual subjectivity, we must treat romantic risk-taking as an ordinary, healthy and essential aspect of growing up.

Fairy Tales Film Festival 2018, Calgary Queer Arts Society, Youth Queer Media ProgramFor the study of youth in cinema, we, as scholars, must always remind ourselves that most images we analyze are created by adults representing youth, not by youth representing themselves. As such, they represent an idea of youth—a memory, a trauma, a wish. They are stories these adults tell themselves about what they need youth to be in that moment. Coming out becomes the singular narrative of queer youth, and positions adulthood as a safe and stable destination after escaping the traumatic space of adolescence. The stories in these films provide important moments for adult queers to “feel backward” (2009: 7) as Heather Love says, and to process the pain of a queer childhood. And for young people exploring their sexuality, these stories are essential for at-risk youth who feel hopeless, trapped, or alone.

According to Trites, adolescents are simultaneously freed and restrained-while \"[a]dolescents are empowered by institutions and their parents and by knowledge of their bodies, . . . [but] by offering up rules and holding repercussions over their heads that limit their newfound freedoms, these things also restrict them\" (\"Harry Potter Novels\" 473). The \"Politics of Visibility and Affirmation\" While it is an unfortunate fact of life in the twenty-first century that many LGBTQ teens are still rejected by communities, friends, and family because of their sexuality, it is no longer the only, or even dominant, reality; novels working within the genre of realistic fiction must acknowledge multiple truths about being lesbian, just as they do diverse truths about being straight. Since the 1970s, and especially in the last decade, depictions of lesbians in young adult literature have increased in number and become deeper, richer, and, most importantly, celebratory.

Mike has felt alienated and alone for as long as he can remember, until a new boy arrives at his school - awakening feelings and a world of possibilities he'd never before dared to dream of.

What We Have charts the journey of Maurice Lesmers, a gay actor and teacher, who finds himself lost in translation in Northern Ontario. Fleeing from his troubled past in France, Maurice's romantic sense of Canada leads him to seek refuge in a remote community where he discovers little outlet for his Parisian appetite for one-night stands. But things get complicated after he takes a job tutoring French to 15-year old Allan, a shy student struggling at school, and with his sexuality. When he lands the leading role, Maurice finds himself surprisingly romantically to the theatre company's charismatic manager, Michael. But their relationship is endangered when Maurice gets caught up in Allan's adolescent world -- risking everything to protect his young student who develops a hard-to-resist attraction for his enigmatic European mentor.

A contemporary retelling of the classic tale of The City Mouse and the Country Mouse, Stray follows the story of Mouse, a teenager who leaves his home in the country in search of his place in the world. Along the way he is exposed to the seedy underbelly of the city and the people who live there, including the broken drag diva Lame Doe Ray, who takes him under her wing. Will Mouse be led astray and consumed by the drugsoaked landscape of the ghetto?

Martin, a young Argentine student, is exploring the reactions of his sports coach, Sebastian, while vying for his love and affection. He has an opportunity - one night to push the envelope and be as close as ever to reaching what he so desperately wants. With his teacher keeping him off at a distance, but at the same time being so kind and nurturing, Martin continues to inch further and further towards crossing the line. But, with all the twists and turns of love, life, and personas, Martin finds himself on the wrong side of the line, and Sebastian finds himself with more regret than Martin could have ever imagined.

In Voices of Diversity (2006), Langer de Ramirez cites the following statistics supplied by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network in 2004: * 81.8% of youth reported hearing homophobic remarks such as \"faggot\" or \"That's so gay\" frequently from other students. * 75.1 % of youth who reported feeling unsafe at school claimed that these feelings were due to either their sexual orientation or how they express their gender. * 23.9% of youth reported frequent verbal harassment in school. * 22.4% of youth reported sometimes, often or frequently suffering physical harassment (being pushed, shoved, etc.) in school due to their sexual orientation. * 16.9% of youth reported some incident of physical assault (being punched, kicked, injured with a weapon) in the past year due to their sexual orientation. * 57.9% of youth reported that they had personal property damaged or stolen in the past school year (85). Despite the educational establishment's interest in the health and well being of its youth, issues of teen homosexuality have not been confronted. [...]the youngest and most vulnerable members of the gay and lesbian community enter puberty and our schools at their own peril (169). Uribe also asserts the wide acceptance of the belief that at least one in every ten in society is homosexual; in fact, this figure has remained consistent over the years. [...]the issue for educators becomes paramount. The impact of Mom's cancer and Jo's alcoholism leads to divorce. Because the women are a same-sex couple, Jo has no biological or legal right to Nick, although he prefers to live with her.

[...] Rothbauer's list of such novels published in Canada totals only 15 titles, all published between 1989 and 2001, with a total of 26 central or supporting gay and lesbian characters (either adolescents or adults).2 Reminding us that \"the presence and the absence of homosexuality in fiction for young people have political implications\" surrounding the challenge to or reinforcement of heteronormativity (13), her investigation of the range of \"possibilities\" depicted by these characters leads to discouraging results: although these texts include a few strong female protagonists, young gay male characters-when they exist at all-are largely confined to secondary roles that rely on clichés of effeminacy, passivity, and self-hatred (15-19).