Crossing Lines
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the critically acclaimed author Black and White comes this finely wrought story of bullies, victims, and the bystanders caught in between.
How do you decide when to stand by and when to take a stand?
Adonis is on the football team. He’s dating one of the hottest girls at school. He’s a guy’s guy. He’s tough.
Alan is the new kid in school. He joins the Fashion Club, wears lipstick, and wants to be called Alana.
The football team can’t stand Alan. How can they be real guys as long as he’s prancing around school, dressing and acting like a girl? They want to teach Alan a lesson that he’ll never forget. Adonis is glad to go along with his teammates . . . until they come up with a dangerous plan to publicly humiliate Alan. Now Adonis must decide whether he wants to be a guy who follows the herd—or a man who does what’s right.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Message trumps story in this chronicle of homophobia set on the gridiron. High school jock Adonis (really), a formerly pudgy kid, operates cautiously, constantly worried he'll be the next target of the bullies on his team. But they've got their hands full torturing Alan, an openly gay transfer student who, perhaps bolstered by the fellow members (all girls) of the school's Fashion Club, has started wearing lipstick and dresses to school. This is more than the football players can abide, and a takedown is planned. For Adonis, it's a no-win situation. If he outs the planned attack, he'll become a pariah among his teammates; if he remains quiet, he'll alienate his sister and girlfriend, who know Alan through Fashion Club. While the bullying issue has gravitas and Volponi (Rikers High) creates a believable atmosphere of masculine one-upmanship and pervasive homophobia, his characters are stereotypes: Alan's father is a no-nonsense military colonel, while Adonis's mother preaches tolerance and acceptance. The denouement is predictable, and Adonis's sudden location of a moral compass by story's end meshes with the after-school special tone of the narrative. Ages 12 up.
