In honor of National Poetry month which begins on April 1st, I will be reading (and re-reading) YA novels that are written in verse. For the poetry-weary I can assure you that these books are not pretentious! You will not be able to put them down!
In Freakboy by Elizabeth Clark, Brendan is a star varsity wrestler although he does it mainly because it looks good on college applications. He has a beautiful girlfriend, Vanessa, who loves him and a younger sister who looks up to him. But Brendan also knows if any of his friends or family ever discovered his secret, they would definitely not understand since he doesn’t quite understand it himself. He doesn’t know if there is even a word for freaks like him. This powerful novel-in-verse is told in the alternating voices of Brendan, Vanessa, and Angel, a transgender woman who works at a local LGBTQ youth center.
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