Book Description
for Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
The summer she’s 15, Maggie falls for Erin, an older teen and senior counselor at her summer camp. It takes Maggie by surprise—she hasn’t considered her sexuality, or relationships in general—but she senses the attraction is mutual. The times Maggie and Erin see each other become increasingly weighted with possibility, but Maggie doesn’t know how to act on her feelings, and she’s worried the other girls will figure them out. For Maggie, the camaraderie and the competitiveness, the boy craziness and hijinks of her fellow campers is something that generally puzzles her. But she finds a supportive friend in Bethany, who is younger, a little less mature, and a lot less self-conscious, not to mention refreshingly open minded. When Maggie and Erin finally connect, it is heady and charged as they hold hands and eventually kiss. When the camp director finds out, it’s clear she tells Erin to keep her distance form Maggie. This distance—physical, emotional, crushing—remains through summer’s end. The main story at camp is framed by opening and closing chapters set two years later, when Maggie and Erin reunite and their four-year age difference proves to be a chasm. Thrash’s understated graphic novel is an emotional masterwork, conveying through a myriad of small details what it’s like to be young, to fall, to flail, and to feel so deeply in a memoir that is not without humor but is also aching and bittersweet. (Age 13 and older)
CCBC Choices 2016. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2016. Used with permission.