What happens when the places or people we consider safe prove otherwise? Recent middle-grade books by Brandy Colbert and L.C. Rosen dive into the confusion and angst young teens face when pressured to change themselves in the pursuit of love or friendship Colbert’s The Only Black Girls in Town explores how two girls living in a predominantly white small town experience their blackness in similar and different ways. Rosen’s Camp, set at a summer camp for queer teens, is a coming-of-age story about one teenage boy’s willingness to hide his true self to get noticed by the boy of his dreams.
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The Only Black Girls in Town
By Brandy Colbert
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Beach-loving surfer Alberta has been the only black girl in town for years. Alberta’s best friend, Laramie, is the closest thing she has to a sister, but there are some things even Laramie can’t understand. When the bed and breakfast across the street finds new owners, Alberta is ecstatic to learn the family is black-and they have a 12-year-old daughter just like her.
Alberta is positive she and the new girl, Edie, will be fast friends. But while Alberta loves being a California girl, Edie misses her native Brooklyn and finds it hard to adapt to small-town living.
When the girls discover a box of old journals in Edie’s attic, they team up to figure out exactly who’s behind them and why they got left behind. Soon they discover shocking and painful secrets of the past and learn that nothing is quite what it seems
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Camp
By L.C. Rosen
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Sixteen-year-old Randy Kapplehoff loves spending the summer at Camp Outland, a camp for queer teens. It’s where he met his best friends. It’s where he takes to the stage in the big musical. And it’s where he fell for Hudson Aaronson-Lim – who’s only into straight-acting guys and barely knows not-at-all-straight-acting Randy even exists.
This year, though, it’s going to be different. Randy has reinvented himself as ‘Del’ – buff, masculine, and on the market. Even if it means giving up show tunes, nail polish, and his unicorn bedsheets, he’s determined to get Hudson to fall for him.
But as he and Hudson grow closer, Randy has to ask himself how much is he willing to change for love. And is it really love anyway, if Hudson doesn’t know who he truly is?
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