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David Levithan

Boy Meets Boy: 20th Anniversary Edition Paperback – May 10, 2005

by David Levithan (Author)

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This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance.

When Paul meets Noah, he thinks he’s found the one his heart is made for. Until he blows it. The school bookie says the odds are 12-to-1 against him getting Noah back, but Paul’s not giving up without playing his love really loud. His best friend Joni might be drifting away, his other best friend Tony might be dealing with ultra-religious parents, and his ex-boyfriend Kyle might not be going away anytime soon, but sometimes everything needs to fall apart before it can really fit together right.

This is a happy-meaningful romantic comedy about finding love, losing love, and doing what it takes to get love back in a crazy-wonderful world.

Reading age

12 - 17 years
Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Grade level

7 - 9
Lexile measure

730L
Dimensions

5.56 x 0.5 x 8.31 inches
Publisher

Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date

May 10, 2005
ISBN-10

0375832998
ISBN-13

978-0375832994
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"In its blithe acceptance and celebration of human differences, this is arguably the most important gay novel since Annie on My Mind and seems to represent a revolution in the publishing of gay-themed books for adolescents." —Booklist, starred review

"In a genre filled with darkness, torment, and anxiety, this is a shiningly affirmative and hopeful book." —The Bulletin, starred review

"Levithan's prophecy of a hate-free world in which everyone loves without persecution makes this a provocative and important read for all young adults, gay or straight." —School Library Journal, starred review

"Using a diverse cast of queer characters, David Levithan’s semi-utopian Boy Meets Boy...affirm[s] that there is a whole rainbow of ways to be gay." —The Horn Book

From the Back Cover

This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance.
When Paul meets Noah, he thinks he's found the one his heart is made for. Until he blows it. The school bookie says the odds are 12-to-1 against him getting Noah back, but Paul's not giving up without playing his love really loud. His best friend Joni might be drifting away, his other best friend Tony might be dealing with ultra-religious parents, and his ex-boyfriend Kyle might not be going away anytime soon, but sometimes everything needs to fall apart before it can really fit together right.
This is a happy-meaningful romantic comedy about finding love, losing love, and doing what it takes to get love back in a crazy-wonderful world.

"From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

David Levithan is a children’s book editor in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Now away we go

9 p.m. on a November Saturday. Joni, Tony, and I are out on the town. Tony is from the next town over and he needs to get out. His parents are extremely religious. It doesn't even matter which religion--they're all the same at a certain point, and few of them want a gay boy cruising around with his friends on a Saturday night. So every week Tony feeds us bible stories, then on Saturday we show up at his doorstep well versed in parables and earnestness, dazzling his parents with our blinding purity. They slip him a twenty and tell him to enjoy our study group. We go spend the money on romantic comedies, dimestore toys, and diner jukeboxes. Our happiness is the closest we'll ever come to a generous God, so we figure Tony's parents would understand, if only they weren't set on misunderstanding so many things.

Tony has to be home by midnight, so we are on a Cinderella mission. With this in mind, we keep our eye on the ball.

There isn't really a gay scene or a straight scene in our town. They got all mixed up a while back, which I think is for the best. Back when I was in second grade, the older gay kids who didn't flee to the city for entertainment would have to make their own fun. Now it's all good. Most of the straight guys try to sneak into the Queer Beer bar. Boys who love boys flirt with girls who love girls. And whether your heart is strictly ballroom or bluegrass punk, the dance floors are open to whatever you have to offer.

This is my town. I've lived here all my life.

Tonight, our Gaystafarian bud Zeke is gigging at the local chain bookstore. Joni has a driver's license from the state where her grandmother lives, so she drives us around in the family sedan. We roll down the windows and crank the radio--we like the idea of our music spilling out over the whole neighborhood, becoming part of the air. Tony has a desperate look tonight, so we let him control the dial. He switches to a Mope Folk station, and we ask him what's going on.

"I can't say," he tells us, and we know what he means. That nameless empty.

We try to cheer him up by treating him to a blue Slurp-Slurp at the local 24-7. We each take sips, to see whose tongue can get the bluest. Once Tony's sticking his tongue out with the rest of us, we know he's going to be okay.

Zeke's already jamming by the time we get to the highway bookstore. He's put his stage in the European History section, and every now and then he'll throw names like Hadrian and Copernicus into his mojo rap. The place is crowded. A little girl in the children's section puts the Velveteen Rabbit on her shoulders for a better view. Her moms are standing behind her, holding hands and nodding to Zeke's tune. The Gaystafarian crowd has planted itself in the Gardening section, while the three straight members of the guys' lacrosse team are ogling a bookstore clerk from Literature. She doesn't seem to mind. Her glasses are the color of licorice.

I move through the crowd with ease, sharing nods and smiling hellos. I love this scene, this floating reality. I am a solo flier looking out over the land of Boyfriends and Girlfriends. I am three notes in the middle of a song.

Joni grabs me and Tony, pulling us into Self-Help. There are a few monkish types already there, some of them trying to ignore the music and learn the Thirteen Ways to Be an Effective Person. I know Joni's brought us here because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore. So we dance. Tony hesitates--he isn't much of a dancer. But as I've told him a million times, when it comes to true dancing, it doesn't matter what you look like--it's all about the joy you feel.

Zeke's jive is infectious. People are crooning and swooning into one another. You can see the books on the shelves in kaleidoscope form--spinning rows of colors, the passing blur of words.

I sway. I sing. I elevate. My friends are by my side, and Zeke is working the Huguenots into his melody. I spin around and knock a few books off the shelves. When the song is through, I bend to pick them up.

I grasp on the ground and come face to face with a cool pair of sneakers.

"This yours?" a voice above the sneakers asks.

I look up. And there he is.

His hair points in ten different directions. His eyes are a little close together, but man, are they green. There's a little birthmark on his neck, the shape of a comma.

I think he's wonderful.

He's holding a book out to me. Migraines Are Only in Your Mind.

I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my heartbeat. I am aware that my shirt is half untucked. I take the book from him and say thanks. I put it back on the shelf. There's no way that Self-Help can help me now.

"Do you know Zeke?" I ask, nodding to the stand.

"No," the boy answers. "I just came for a book."

"I'm Paul."

"I'm Noah."

He shakes my hand. I am touching his hand.

I can feel Joni and Tony keeping their curious distance.

"Do you know Zeke?" Noah asks. "His tunes are magnificent."

I roll the word in my head--magnificent. It's like a gift to hear.

"Yeah, we go to school together," I say casually.

"The high school?"

"That's the one." I'm looking down. He has perfect hands.

"I go there, too."

"You do?" I can't believe I've never seen him before. If I'd seen him before, it would have damn well registered.

"Two weeks now. Are you a senior?"

I look down at my Keds. "I'm a sophomore."

"Cool."

Now I fear he's humoring me. There's nothing cool about being a sophomore. Even a new kid would know that.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Alfred A. Knopf; Reprint edition (May 10, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375832998
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375832994
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 12 - 17 years
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 730L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 9
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 0.012 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.56 x 0.5 x 8.31 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #108,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #142 in Teen & Young Adult LGBTQ+ Romance
- #159 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Emotions & Feelings
- #753 in Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Romance

Customer Reviews:
631 ratings

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About the author

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David Levithan

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David Levithan is the author and co-author of over twenty YA novels, many of them bestsellers. His first YA novel was Boy Meets Boy in 2003. For more about David and his books, you can check out his website davidlevithan.com. His lover's dictionary can also be found on Twitter at @loverdiction.

Customer reviews

5 star		73%
4 star		14%
3 star		7%
2 star		1%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Lisa

All he really wanted in the first place

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 14, 2006

Verified Purchase

Already honored as an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, An ALA Quick Pick, A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and A Lambda Literary Award Winner, David Levithan's BOY MEETS BOY lives up to its reputation as a groundbreaking gay-themed novel for young adults. The tension created between the characters is top-notch, and the writing quality something after which every writer strives.

Paul has known he was gay since his Kindergarten teacher wrote it in his report card: "PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND HAS A VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF." Since then, his life hasn't been as difficult as it probably should have been. The town he lives in is supportive, his family loves him for who he is, and Joni (straight as a toothpick) and Tony (also gay--they're just friends) are his best friends forever. Joni's mom and dad are like a second set of parents to Paul, and he's practically got Joni's house memorized he's spent so much time there. Tony's life hasn't been easy. Because of his church-going parents, he's had to lie to them for years so he could sneak out to have any kind of fun. And fun they had.

Everything changes when Paul meets Noah, the new kid at school. Noah's parents don't know he's gay. From the moment Noah invites Paul into his private art studio, things heat up between the two of them. At the same time they're hitting it off, Paul's old boyfriend Kyle wants to get back together. Tony's trying to figure out how to tell his parents who he really is. And Infinite Darling, the drag queen quarterback and homecoming queen, can't seem to mind her own business because her friends are her business.

Unfortunately, the characters (Noah excluded) are largely one-dimensional. It's as though the kids attending this school are completely obsessed with and defined by their sexuality, while Noah's character is the only one with any depth to him. The rest of them seem only interested in figuring out their gender and sexual orientation, begging the question--"If these kids don't want people to define them by their sexuality, then why don't they define themselves by something else?" Chalk it up as a missed opportunity to have characters who happen to be gay, instead of gay characters.

That said, Paul's story is about love. About how "part of love is letting a person be who they want to be." How "if you want to be loved," you've got to "be lovable." It's about a kid who everyone else thinks has it all together, and the truth is that when compared to most kids like him, he probably does. Even still, he can't help but "want to feel like life matters," like the courage of his friends will somehow make a difference, like for once, he'll be able to have and to hold something real. Which is all he really wanted in the first place.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Wacky but sweet YA

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 21, 2013

Verified Purchase

Paul has it pretty easy. The high school sophomore discovered and accepted his homosexuality at an early age, his parents love him the way he is, and he apparently attends one of the most liberal high schools in America. The football team’s star quarterback is a drag queen, who is also elected homecoming queen. Paul has a close circle of friends, which includes his gal-pal Joni and Tony, who in sharp contrast has fundamentalist parents that are trying to pray his gay away.

However, while Paul may be free from many of the more unpleasant issues often faced by gay teens, his life is far from uncomplicated. As “Boy Meets Boy” opens, Paul has a chance encounter with Noah, a new kid at school who takes his breath away. Paul has had boyfriends before, but nobody he felt as strongly about as he does for Noah. And, apparently the feelings are mutual, but things don’t go smoothly for our hero, as his life gets even more complicated and he has to struggle to win Noah’s heart.

I usually avoid books labeled “Young Adult” (YA). I’m definitely not young, and I’m not really crazy about the adult part either, but this book came highly recommended so I decided to give it a try. Told in the first person by Paul, the story starts out a little over the top, with the boy discovering he is gay in kindergarten and running as the first openly gay class president of the third grade. By the time you get to the cheer-leading squad on Harleys, you’re most likely at the whatever stage of just going with it. Oddly, it’s right about this point that the tone gets a little more restrained.

While the writing remains relatively breezy throughout, the tone does get more somber as Paul faces some real challenges in trying to balance the demands of his friends, his budding romance and being in high school. While Paul faces many of the typical issues of being a teen in love, the story is thankfully free of all the angst that usually makes YA books so avoidable. Yes, he has the occasional moment of doubt, but he never sits on the fence for long. The characters may not grab you, but they won’t bore you either.

That the characters didn’t grab me, I put down to the enormous difference between us, both in terms of age and experience. It’s been a very, very long time since I was in high school, and that was back in the dark ages when those of us who were gay generally tried to blend in as much as possible. There were no openly gay students in my rather large suburban high school, so Paul’s world is something I have a hard time even imagining. Paul’s world is so far removed from my own that it almost reads like speculative fiction, rather than simply an exaggerated view of what the world can be like for teenagers today.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Catman

A real page-turner!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

I really enjoyed this story! It's interesting to have the central character (Paul), as 'sorted' and comfortable with being gay. The story flows well and is a real page turner. The characters are very real, and I cared about what happened to them. Paul's relationship with his best friend, Tony, is very well written. In the end I was left wanting to know what happened next, and that's a sign of good writing. I hope everything worked out well for Noah and Paul, as well as Tony! My only negative comment is lots of characters were introduced early on in the story, and I initially got a bit confused, but that was probably just me! I would definitely recommend this book.

Book Blog Bird

Boy Meets Boy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 14, 2015

Verified Purchase

This book came up on a list of 'Short Books to Read to Bump Up Your Reading Challenge Total'.

I'll be honest here, I'm starting to get slightly obsessed with my 100 book challenge. I did the same challenge last year, but got sidetracked around May by reading Pillars of the Earth, a damn fine book, but so long I literally thought I'd die of old age before I managed to finish it. I still blame Pillars of the Earth for the fact that I didn't go out on New Year's Eve. (I spent nearly whole of the 31st December 2014 curled up on my sofa, reading feverishly, desperate to meet my book quota. Am I proud of myself? Why yes, I am.)

So anyway, when Boy Meets Boy came up on my radar I decided to give it a go. It was £2.99 on Kindle which is more than I usually tend to pay for a book, especially one which only exists as a set of binary code, but the lure of being ahead of the game on my reading challenge proved too much.

The plot is centered around a boy called Paul, a gay teenager who meets an entrancing boy called Noah. Noah captivates him totally and the rest of the book deals with how Paul, Noah and their diverse bunch of friends navigate the world and their own love lives. It kind of helps that they live in a town that sounds a lot like Brighton; lesbian, gay, bi, straight, transgender - everyone lives together in perfect harmony.

There's a brilliant cast of characters from the star quarterback, a six-foot-four crossdresser called Infinite Darlene, to the Joy Scouts (used to be the Boy Scouts, but Boy Scouts wouldn't let gays join) and Boy Meets Boy is a lovely book. David Levithan captures perfectly the heart-wrenching feelings of falling freshly in love with someone and what it means to have beautiful, supportive friends.

If I have a criticism, it's that the book is slightly too saccharine-sweet for me. It left me thinking of that old Coke ad from the 70s. The dark, twisted cynic in me would have preferred some more heartaches, dilemmas and so on to keep things interesting, but perhaps that says as much about me as it does about David Levithan. Don't get me wrong - the book deals with issues (confusion over sexuality, parents who find homosexuality morally repugnant), but everything seems to get wrapped up neatly by the end of the book in a big sparkly bow.

Having said this, Levithan is a complete master writer. I gave this book 7/10 on my blog, but I've rounded up for here.

3 people found this helpful

Mrs. K. A. Wheatley

A truly lovely book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 5, 2014

Verified Purchase

I loved this book. The premise, that the hero had not had trouble coming out, and lived in a town where being gay or straight, bi or whatever was totally acceptable, and a drag queen was also a football hero, was excellent. Instead this is a more straightforward love story, where you really get to concentrate on character and the emotions of the people rather than the whole issue of whether someone is going to come out, and if they are, what everyone is going to think. The story was very sweet. The characters were excellent and if I were in a school with older readers I would order this for the school library in a heartbeat. As it is, the material is a little too sophisticated for primary aged readers, but would be perfect for twelve and overs.

One person found this helpful

George Lester

Suddenly one of my favourite books!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 21, 2012

Verified Purchase

Recommended to me by a friend, this isn't the type of book I normally read. Now it is one of my favourite books of all time.
A beautifully crafted story that follows "Paul" a boy in his late teens as he discovers "Noah", the new guy in town. It is a well crafted story set in a very accessible world. Paul is accompanied by a plethora of colourful characters from drag queen, all star quarterback "Infinite Darlene" to the quiet, Christian boy "Tony".
This is one of the few books that I have finished reading and wished that I could have it erased from my memory, simply so I could discover the book all over again.
A story of love, loss and being young, this book has a lot of heart.
Xx

2 people found this helpful

alison murphy

Light hearted first love

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

Would have liked less school stuff and more romance. It was such a lovely connection between the boys.

One person found this helpful

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