Wittlinger, Ellen

When Marisol, a self-confident eighteen-year-old lesbian, moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work and try to write a novel, she falls under the spell of her beautiful but deceitful writing teacher, while also befriending a shy, vulnerable girl from Indiana.

Grady, a transgendered high school student, yearns for acceptance by his classmates and family as he struggles to adjust to his new identity as a male.

Each of ten teenagers living in Scrub Harbor, Massachusetts, explores his or her identity at the same time that the local residents consider changing the name of their town.

"Twelve-year-old Maisie feels that she has enough complications in her life: her actor uncle has moved in with her family while he recovers from an accident and her father is not pleased, her grandmother is slipping into dementia but wants to remarry, her mom has been laid off, and her best friend Cyrus, with whom she spends Saturdays watching classic movies, has revealed that he is gay--but Gary, the boy he has a crush on, seems more attracted to Maisie herself"--Provided by publisher.

"Twelve-year-old Maisie feels that she has enough complications in her life: her actor uncle has moved in with her family while he recovers from an accident and her father is not pleased, her grandmother is slipping into dementia but wants to remarry, her mom has been laid off, and her best friend Cyrus, with whom she spends Saturdays watching classic movies, has revealed that he is gay--but Gary, the boy he has a crush on, seems more attracted to Maisie herself"--Provided by publisher.

Twelve-year-old Izzy's life just seems to get more and more complicated: she is upset by her father's new marriage, and a new baby on the way; she is expected to look out for her ten-year-old cousin, Oliver, who has moved in with her family since his mother committed suicide, because his father is depressed and having trouble coping; and now Ben, the rebellious sixteen-year-old son of Izzy's mother's boyfriend, is also living with them--but when Oliver's father disappears, the three children put aside their differences and set out to find him.

In the Cape Cod village of Provincetown, Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Lorna is swept out to sea, leaving her three best friends to struggle to come to terms with their missing leader and with the secrets each endeavors to hide.

Grady, a transgendered high school student, yearns for acceptance by his classmates and family as he struggles to adjust to his new identity as a male.

In 1962, when her friend Lowell begins to hang around new friends who think girls are losers, Juliet, a fearful fifth-grader, teams up with bold, brave Patsy, who challenges the boys to a series of increasingly dangerous contests.