After his mother dies, Daniel Bradford, known as Sprout, moves from Long Island to Kansas to live with his alcoholic father. It’s hard to be gay and quirky in rural Kansas, but Sprout eventually manages to find a boyfriend, and one of his teachers takes him under her wing.
Publisher’s Description:
On Long Island, I’d been anonymous. Just one of 2,567 students, not at the top of the head, not at the bottom. Just a brown-haired piece of the middle. Take me out and nothing would collapse. No one would notice.
But in Kansas, I was marked out. The new kid. The stranger. The boy with the weird accent. The boy with the weird dad, and no mom. From the moment Madison Pagels tripped me as I walked down the aisle of the school bus at 7:07 a.m. to the moment Madison’s best friend, Chelsea Monroe, tripped me as I walked up the aisle at 3:56 p.m., and at the spitballs, hall-pulling, snickers, catcalls, “Kick me” notes, and fistfights in between, the school day pretty much seemed to revolve around me. After one rock-solid week of this, I decided that if there had to be a target on my head, I’d paint it there myself.
Genre: Contemporary
Representation:
Gender:
Cis boys: Sprout
Sexual Orientation:
Gay/Queer: Sprout
Romantic Orientation:
Not explicitly addressed.
Race/Ethnicity:
White: Sprout