"More than thirty years ago a pioneering young adult librarian named Margaret A. Edwards protested that 'many adults seem to think that if sex is not mentioned to adolescents, it will go away.'
"As succeeding decades have demonstrated, silence is no arbiter of behavior. Not only has sex not gone away, it has become a quintessential -- perhaps even obligatory? -- rite of passage for adolescents."
So writes Michael Cart in his foreword to Love and Sex: Ten Stories of Truth, a groundbreaking volume in which some of the finest writers for adults and teens have contributed original stories on the various aspects of love and sexuality.
From Joan Bauer's Beth, whose resolve to remain a virgin is tested when the man of her dreams asks her out, to Michael Lowenthal's Jesse, for whom an after-school tutoring session fulfills a childhood obsession, to Laurie Halse Anderson's Adam and Lily, thrown together on an unwanted blind date, all of these characters reveal different angles on the pressures and complications (and occasional joys) of a teenager's romantic life.
Other authors in this collection include Emma Donoghue, Louise Hawes, Angela Johnson, Chris Lynch, Garth Nix, Sonya Sones, and Shelley Stoehr. A portion of the money generated from the sale of this book will be donated to the American Library Association's Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) for the promotion of books recommended by YALSA and of teen reading, including their national Teen Read Week.
