March's YA Pick

My apologies for missing February's YA pick. I am back on board, though, with a pick for March.

March's YA pick is the novel Luna by Julie Anne Peters. This book is already out in paperback and I cannot believe it took me so long to find it because it is a good one and I am a major scout for good books about teens in crisis, due to my work.

Luna is the story of a trans-gender teen and the sister who loves her. The story is told from the sister's point of view and it clearly conveys both her deep and loyal, often self-sacrificing sisterly love, and her very real but guilt-inducing need to be able to do the work of her own growing up without feeling like she is the only thing keeping her sister sane. The book is full of truly heart-rending passages about a teen who feels that she can only be herself at night, alone with her sister, and who realizes that she must be herself in the open, no matter who it hurts, if she is to survive. Except for her younger sister, Luna's family is not supportive and her community is beyond un-supportive, so it is easy to see how she came to lean so heavily on the one person who loves her for herself, and how hard it is for her to stop and learn to stand on her own feet in the face of mind-numbing discrimination. The book does not fall back on cliches or try to simplify the messy interactions of the characters, but presents them as whole people with glories and failures. It is a skillful illumination of the difficulties of being very different and the importance of being true to yourself (also the importance of loving your sister, always a favorite value of mine).