Crossing Lines

May 16, 2011
Message trumps story in this chronicle of homophobia set on the gridiron. High school jock Adonis (really), a formerly pudgy kid, operates cautiously, constantly worried he'll be the next target of the bullies on his team. But they've got their hands full torturing Alan, an openly gay transfer student who, perhaps bolstered by the fellow members (all girls) of the school's Fashion Club, has started wearing lipstick and dresses to school. This is more than the football players can abide, and a takedown is planned. For Adonis, it's a no-win situation. If he outs the planned attack, he'll become a pariah among his teammates; if he remains quiet, he'll alienate his sister and girlfriend, who know Alan through Fashion Club. While the bullying issue has gravitas and Volponi (Rikers High) creates a believable atmosphere of masculine one-upmanship and pervasive homophobia, his characters are stereotypes: Alan's father is a no-nonsense military colonel, while Adonis's mother preaches tolerance and acceptance. The denouement is predictable, and Adonis's sudden location of a moral compass by story's end meshes with the after-school special tone of the narrative. Ages 12âup.

May 1, 2011

An unsubtle and old-fashioned exploration of homophobia.

The football team is grossed out when Alan, flamboyantly effeminate, transfers to their high school (cue a relentless stream of homophobic jokes). The novel's narrator, varsity player Adonis, battling a negative body image from chubbier days, is no exception. His homophobia is nurtured by his firefighter dad and frowned on by his teacher mom and sister Jeannie, the school's Fashion Club VP and Alan's friend. That Alan, the club's sole male, is its president goes unnoticed; gender bias is beyond the one-issue scope. Alan's dad is an Army colonel and clueless bigot. Manliness here equals homophobia; the one tolerant male adult is Adonis' hippie, ponytailed English teacher. Adonis' dilemma propels the action. (Oddly, he's never teased about his name). Melody, the girl he's pursuing, believes, approvingly, that Adonis belongs to the pro-Alan faction. Adonis' football-team peers will reject him unless he treats Alan with ridicule and contempt. Chief among these one-dimensional stereotypes is Alan—kind, noble and the dullest drag queen ever to wear dresses and lipstick. Is he gay, transsexual, cross-dressing or questioning? We're never told. Nuanced distinctions of character don't exist in this curiously retro world in which no one watches Glee and gays in the military aren't on anyone's radar.

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November 1, 2011

Gr 9 Up-Adonis is a football player. He's not the quarterback. He's not a leader. He's not the star. So when an effeminate transfer student named Alan starts at his school, and all his football-player friends resolve to make fun of him, Adonis is trapped. He can't go against his friends because he doesn't want to be ridiculed, too. Things become even more complicated when his sister Jeannie and girlfriend Melody form a close friendship with Alan, who eventually starts coming to school wearing lipstick and calling himself Alana. When they are paired together in a school project, Adonis gets to know Alana better and realizes that, while he's still struggling to discover his identity, he's not the monster that his friends make him out to be. When a foul plot to humiliate Alana during a public fashion show is revealed, Adonis has a decision to make. Does he say nothing? Or does he stand up for what he thinks is right? While this title highlights the relevant issue of LGBT bullying, Adonis's crisis of conscience comes a little too late. He spends the early half of the story thinking that Alan is disgusting and wrong, so much so that his redemptive turn at the end seems almost out of character. However, focusing neither on Alan/Alana nor the true bully, Ethan, the story convincingly presents the perspective of the guy uncomfortably stuck in the middle.-Ryan Donovan, New York Public Library

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2011
Grades 7-12 Told from the vantage point of the complicit bystander, Volponis latest novel is a moving story of bullying and courage. Adonis relishes his spot on the varsity football team and plays along with his teammates aggressive posturing. Alan, who is working through identity questions, comes to school in lipstick and dresses and soon finds himself in the teams crosshairs. Escalating bullying culminates in a premeditated, violent public attack. Adonis intervention is too little, too late, and he tries to work his way through guilt and remorse to extend friendship and a genuine apology to Alan. Volponis characterizations verge on the stereotypical: Adonis father is a firefighter who reinforces his sons macho contempt, and Alans father, an army recruiter, calls his son a disgrace. Yet by reinforcing many teens preconceptions about how the adults in their lives, and society in general, perceive and respond to questions of sexual identity, the author makes Adonis growth and breakthrough both plausible and powerful. This quick-reading, tightly constructed novel will provoke substantive questions, making it a great choice for group discussion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)