Book: Rainbow Boys
By: Alex Sanchez
Published: October 1, 2001
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Genre: YA LGBTQ
Pages: 272
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About Rainbow Boys
Jason is a jock with a girlfriend, but can’t stop dreaming of other guys. Kyle doesn’t look gay but is. Right now, it works in his favor because he hasn’t come out yet. Nelson came out a long time ago, but is struggling to tell his best friend that he loves him.
Rainbow Boys follows three very different boys as they struggle to find their identity in the world.
What I thought
I’m not really sure what I was expecting as I was reading Rainbow Boys. I was 11 when this book first came out, so it wasn’t a book I would have really been into when it first came out. Now I’m a mother of two kids. Back then, when the book came out, I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it. I would have felt sadness for them, of course, but wouldn’t have gone any deeper than that. Now that I have two kids of my own, this was a better time for me to read it and actually take it in. I couldn’t help but think about my kids, and I want to be nothing like the parents in this book.
Now I feel like things might be easier since there are so many more people out there who are accepting. Granted, I’m sure there are still some issues around it. I just feel like it’s at least a little bit more accepted now than it was then. But I can still understand why some kids would still be scared to speak out now. Kids are always going to be cruel, and I feel like that’s never going to change. Then there are the parents who are still going to be bigots about the situation. I’m just glad that we do seem to have more of an accepting world for kids like this who don’t have a support system.
My point is, with all of this, Alex does a great job of making you feel for the characters and having you root for them. For me he actually made me think about how I would handle this with my two kids. Would they feel comfortable coming to me? Or is it something they would hide because they think I would react poorly? I really hope that I’m teaching them that they can always come to me and tell me.
It truly gives you a perspective of what goes on with those a part of the LGBT community when all they want is to exist. People can be exceptionally cruel to people who are different, and in that aspect I can completely understand them and how they feel about these things. Being a teen on top of it all is especially confusing.
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