Concerning & Potentially Concerning Content

When reading this concerning content, please keep in mind that “graphic novel” formats tend to lead to these books attracting young readers. About half way through the book the major concern category is revealed. What seemed like a nice story about friendship turns out to be an emotionally charged love story between two young girls. We see a light touching of hands. Next comes holding hands and “hearts fluttering”. It turns into a “crush” and then culminates with the young ladies attending a dance as dates (both buy each other a corsage) and eventually slow dancing and kissing. A teacher announces her “pronouns” after her name and the whole class follows suit, with one young lady using “they/them”. Along the way a neat storyline about creating your own magazine is used to reveal an example that says it is about “different LGBTQIA2S identities” and stories of “coming out” including one that says, “I never regretted coming out. It’s not always easy, but it made my life infinitely more full of joy”. So there’s that… Obviously, that is more than enough to make this a clear Avoid for Christians, but below is the rest of the concerning content: Near the start of the book, Anne comments that “maybe I was born under an unlucky star”, explaining why all goes wrong for her. Anne is very defensive and has a huge temper, especially at the start of the book. She explodes on people. She calls an older lady who is rude to her a terrible name and says she hates her (although this does lead to a nice teaching moment). As a small clue to what is coming later, when Anne and her new foster mom go to a store, the store has a rainbow on the sign out front and the worker wears one on her shirt as well. During a sleepover, the plans include scary movies and ghost stories. After being told to go to sleep, the girls ignore this and tell stories. Here young readers see pretty frightening images during the story. The term “sucks”, “oh my God” (flippantly) and kindred spirit are used. A teacher is called “so boring”.