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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

A history of the Stonewall riots sets the scene with a vibrant description of west Greenwich Village in 1969. That summer, the Stonewall Inn was a place to drink and dance and a place to be free for gays, lesbians, cross-dressers, and transgender people. Everyone knew police raids happened, but the raid on June 28 was different. Its aim was to shut the Mafia-run bar down. It was also different because this time, bar patrons, so often disrespected and closeted outside places like the Stonewall, pushed back. Stonewall customers and their supporters took control against the police, who hadn’t planned on the crowd getting so angry and who didn’t know the warren of streets in the neighborhood as well as those who lived or hung out there. Ann Bausum’s riveting, detailed account includes an overview of activism in the years leading up to these events at Stonewall and a look at their immediate and long-term impact. This includes increased visibility and activism in events like the annual parade that began to commemorate Stonewall (the genesis for gay pride parades across the nation and beyond), the more radical activism that arose during the AIDS crisis when lives were on the line, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and its repeal, and the fight for marriage equality. A spare collection of black-and-white photos accompanies this fascinating history that includes source notes and an ample bibliography. (Age 13 and older)

CCBC Choices 2016 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2016. Used with permission.

From Horn Book

Starred review from July 1, 2015
Bausum begins her history of the gay rights movement with a careful, detailed exposition of the June 1969 Stonewall riots, laying out the events leading up to the clash between the Greenwich Village gay community and the police and putting those events in the context of time and place. She dedicates the first half of the book to the riots themselves, drawing on reports, interviews, and other first-person accounts to put together a candid linear narrative that takes into consideration the perspectives of both sides of the conflict. And on both sides there is nuance, from different factions in the gay community advocating for peaceful or more combative protest to the militancy of the Tactical Patrol Force at the time (and the subsequent remorse of some of the officers involved). Bausum presents the riots as a galvanizing moment that gave the gay rights movement some traction, and traces its evolution in a more cursory way for the second half of the book. Her coverage includes the Christopher Street Liberation Day march, Harvey Milk, the AIDS crisis, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, DOMA, going up through United States v. Windsor, and arriving at the (preIreland vote) present, which she characterizes with hopeful momentum. Bausum writes with the precision of a journalist; there is never any doubt as to what she wonders, what she conjectures, and what she knows. The resulting narrative integrity makes her observations and her conclusions about the persecution and resilience of the LGBTQ community all the more powerful. Back matter includes an extensive bibliography, copious source notes, and a heartfelt author's note. thom barthelmess

(Copyright 2015 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

From School Library Journal

Starred review from April 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-This powerful, well-researched work examines the Stonewall riots, which took place in 1969 in New York City when members of the gay community fought back in response to a police raid on a gay bar. Bausum describes the restrictive lives that many gays and lesbians led in the 1960s and the relief-and risks-of meeting at gay bars. On June 28, 1969, when police arrived at the Stonewall Inn to make arrests, people-transvestites, drag queens, lesbians, and gay men-fought back, instead of filing quietly into police wagons. Quoting from a variety of firsthand sources (journalists, bar patrons, cops, and others), Bausum paints a vivid picture of the three nights of rioting that became the focal point for activists, some of whom had been fighting for gay and lesbian rights in a quieter way and others who found themselves suddenly drawn to the struggle. A month later, a large group of protestors rallied to speak out in Washington Square Park and marched down Christopher Street to the Stonewall Inn in what became the nation's first gay pride march. In the following chapters, Bausum describes the growth of gay and lesbian activism, setbacks, the impact of HIV/AIDS, and issues such as gays in the military and same-sex marriage, bringing readers to the present day and expertly putting these struggles into historical context. VERDICT An essential purchase.-Nancy Silverrod, San Francisco Public Library

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

From Booklist

April 1, 2015
Grades 9-12 It started with a thump on the door of The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village. It was in the early hours of June 28, 1969, and the thump announced a police raid, whichas Bausum dramatically demonstratesturned from raid to riot as the customers of the bar resisted the officers, fomenting an incident that helped launch the gay rights movement. Though it focuses on Stonewall, Bausum's book also offers a contextual look at the conditions of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender in pre-Stonewall America; the Inn's Mafia ties that triggered the raid; and the sometimes uneasy progress of gay rights since that day, including the setback engendered by the AIDS epidemic of the '80s. Though comprising little more than a hundred pages of text, the book is comprehensive in its coverage, filled with important information, and compassionate in its tone. It sheds welcome light on a subject that deserves greater coverage in YA literature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

From Publisher's Weekly

Starred review from March 30, 2015
Bausum (Stubby the War Dog) offers a powerful and moving account of the pivotal Stonewall riots of 1969 and the struggle for gay rights in the U.S. The riots occurred after police raided the Stonewall Inn, a grungy, mafia-run gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood. "The tension of that night and countless previous nights and hundreds of lifetimes of abuse burst the dams of person after person. The crowd became a mob, and the mob began to riot." Bausum's conversational storytelling whisks readers back to an era when homosexuality was criminalized; after a brief introduction to the night of the raid ("For starters, there was a full moon. And it was beastly hot"), the narrative backtracks a decade to set the context for the violent demonstrations that ensued. A fast-paced accounting reveals how the first riot unfolded, both inside and outside the bar. Final chapters bring the battle for gay civil rights up to the present, with particular attention paid to the AIDS epidemic, pride parades, and the fight for marriage equality. Archival photos, source notes, and a bibliography are included. Ages 12â€"up. (May)â— 

From Kirkus

Starred review from March 15, 2015
Pennies, glass bottles, a parking meter, and a kick line: how a police raid became a community's symbol of freedom. June 28, 1969: the night the gay bar Stonewall was raided by the police for the second time in a week to stop a blackmail operation. What began as a supposedly routine police raid ended with over 2,000 angry, fed-up protesters fighting against the police in New York's West Village. Bausum eloquently and thoughtfully recounts it all, from the violent arrest of a young lesbian by the police to an angry, mocking, Broadway-style kick line of young men protesting against New York's Tactical Control Force. Bausum not only recounts the action of the evening in clear, blow-by-blow journalistic prose, she also is careful to point out assumptions and misunderstandings that might also have occurred during the hot summer night. Her narrative feels fueled by rage and empowerment and the urge to tell the truth. She doesn't bat an eye when recounting the ways that the LGBT fought to find freedom, love, and the physical manifestations of those feelings, whether at the Stonewall Inn or inside the back of a meat truck parked along the Hudson River. Readers coming of age at a time when state after state is beginning to celebrate gay marriage will be astonished to return to a time when it was a crime for a man to wear a dress. Enlightening, inspiring, and moving. (Nonfiction. 13-16)

From AudioFile Magazine

Being gay in 1969 meant living in fear. It was a criminal offense--you could go to jail or lose your job. Your family might disown you. But as equality movements for women and African-Americans grew, gay activists began to flex their civil rights muscles, too, and on June 28, 1969, when the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, enough was enough. Bausum's account of the gay rights movement, from Stonewall through the AIDS crisis to the present, is told with heartbreaking candor, and Tim Federle's narration wrings all the emotion from this gripping history. With vocal intensity that is by turns fearful, angry, or touching, Federle takes listeners on this affecting journey through a shameful part of our national story that, while improved, still leaves much to be desired. S.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine