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Parrotfish

Ellen Wittlinger

Last week I cut my hair, bought some boys' clothes and shoes, wrapped a
large ACE bandage around my chest to flatten my fortunately-not-large
breasts, and began looking for a new name.
Angela Katz-McNair has never felt quite right as a girl. Her whole life
is leading up to the day she decides to become Grady, a guy. While coming
out as transgendered feels right to Grady, he isn't prepared for the
reaction he gets from everyone else. His mother is upset, his younger
sister is mortified, and his best friend, Eve, won't acknowledge him in
public. Why can't people just let Grady be himself?
Grady's life is miserable until he finds friends in some unexpected places
-- like the school geek, Sebastian, who explains that there is precedent
in the natural world (parrotfish change gender when they need to, and the
newly male fish are the alpha males), and Kita, a senior who might just be
Grady's first love.
From acclaimed writer Ellen Wittlinger, this is the groundbreaking story of
one teen's search for self and his struggle for acceptance.
Hard Love

Ellen Wittlinger
Blind Faith

Ellen Wittlinger

After Liz Scattergood's grandmother, Bunny, dies, Liz's mother spirals into a deep depression. She barely gets out of bed, let alone does any work in her pottery studio like she used to. Then Liz's mom starts attending a spiritualist church, where she believes she can communicate with Bunny through a medium. Liz thinks it's weird, but she agrees to go along -- maybe it's a way for her and her mother to bond. But for Liz's atheist dad, the spiritualist church has the opposite effect -- it drives him away from her mom and their family.
Without anyone to talk to, Liz turns to her new neighbor, Nathan. He's dealing with his own mother's terminal cancer, and together, Liz and Nathan help each other cope in the wake of loss. In this moving novel, acclaimed author Ellen Wittlinger explores how a loved one's death impacts those who are left behind.
Love & Lies: Marisol's Story

Ellen Wittlinger

Marisol Guzman has deferred college for a year to accomplish two things: She will write a novel and she will fall in love. How hard could that be? She gets her very own apartment (with her high school best friend as roommate) and a waitressing job at a classic Harvard Square coffeehouse. When she enrolls in an adult education class -- "How to Write Your First Novel" -- there are two big surprises waiting for her: John Galardi, aka "Gio," a fellow zine writer who fell head over heels for her last spring (despite the fact that she's a lesbian) and her instructor, Olivia Frost, the most exquisitely beautiful woman she's ever seen.
But as Marisol ventures into what seems to be her storybook romance with Olivia, things start to go off track. Between the ups and downs of her new relationship, her strained friendship with Lee (a newly out lesbian who is crushing big-time on Marisol), and her roommate's new boyfriend (who is equally afraid of Marisol and their cat) moving in, Marisol starts losing sight of her goals. Is she too blinded by love to see the lies?
In this long-anticipated companion novel to the Printz Honor Book Hard Love, which critics called "A bittersweet tale of self-expression and the struggle to achieve self-love," Ellen Wittlinger offers a novel just as emotionally honest and deeply felt.
The Long Night of Leo and Bree

Ellen Wittlinger

NOBODY SHOULD HAVE A NIGHT LIKE THIS.
8:30 P.M.: It's been four years since Michelle was killed. Leo can't stand to be at home with his mom -- she's crazy with rage. He's got anger of his own and pictures of his dead sister he can't get out of his head.
9:00 P.M.: Bree parks her mom's car and locks the doors. She's in a bad part of town, but she knows the bar has to be around here somewhere. All she wants is to escape for a while and have a good time.
9:15 P.M.: Leo, out for a drive to get away from his mom, spots Bree. Why is this girl alive while Michelle's not?
By 6:30 A.M., when their long night is over, everything has changed.
Heart on My Sleeve

Ellen Wittlinger
Gracie's Girl

Ellen Wittlinger
What's in a Name

Ellen Wittlinger

What's really going on here?
There's something brewing in the town of Scrub Harbor and it's not just about changing the name from Scrub Harbor to Folly Bay. O'Neill has a secret. Adam is starting over. Christine has a crush. Gretchen has a cause. You'll get an earful getting to know them!
Sandpiper

Ellen Wittlinger

Derek really liked me -- at least, he acted that way. I liked him too at first, but it lasted only a few weeks before he was getting on my nerves. And once I break it off with a guy, I don't even want to see him anymore. For a while I feel like I don't want to see any guys anymore, but that doesn't last long either.
Sandpiper Hollow Ragsdale has a bad reputation. At first she just wanted a boyfriend, but now she's had a dozen and doesn't know what she saw in any of them. When one of Sandy's exes, Derek, starts harassing her, a mysterious boy called the Walker comes to her aid. Walker spends his days wandering through town. When Sandy begins to walk with him, he evades her questions, unwilling to reveal anything about himself. She's interested but wary -- why is Walker so secretive? As Derek's aggressions turn dangerous, Sandy and Walker are forced to confront the pain of their pasts, which each of them would rather forget.
Ellen Wittlinger's powerful story of two people struggling to overcome personal demons exemplifies why School Library Journal said that her writing "conveys a fundamental truth" and that she "evokes caring in readers and gives them plenty to think about."
Zigzag

Ellen Wittlinger

Robin can't believe it when her boyfriend, Chris, tells her that his parents have enrolled him in a summer program in Rome. It's their last summer together before he goes away to college, and now they won't even have that time together. It feels like the worst thing that's ever happened to her.
Since Chris is leaving, Robin agrees to join her aunt and cousins on a cross-country road trip, in spite of her reservations -- she and her younger cousins have never really gotten along, and since their father's death they've become even more problematic than before.
Soon the four of them are zigzagging through the West on an eye-opening journey. They explore parts of the country Robin never dreamed existed -- and she discovers inner resources she never imagined she had.
Razzle

Ellen Wittlinger
Trop jeune pour moi

Ellen Wittlinger
Float

Ellen WITTLINGER
Gracie's Girl

Ellen Wittlinger
Gracie's Girl

Ellen Wittlinger
Hard Love

Ellen Wittlinger
Heart on My Sleeve

Ellen Wittlinger
Lombardo's Law

Ellen Wittlinger
Lombardo's Law

Ellen Wittlinger

When the Lombardos arrive, Justine secretly hopes her new neighbor and classmate, Heather, will be a slightly off-center movie lover like herself. As it turns out, it's Heather's younger brother, Mike, who shares Justine's enthusiasm for film, as well as some of her daydreamer's moodiness. Fast friends, Mike and Justine begin to make a movie together, but Justine soon has feelings she doesn't care to admit to anyone . . . especially herself. Is she falling for an eighth-grader? Do two lousy years and three inches really make a difference anyway? Lombardo's Law is a witty love story of two precocious teenagers who have the courage to think for themselves at a time when it's easier not to and when it seems no one older believes that you can.
Noticing Paradise

Ellen Wittlinger

Noah: "There I was in the middle of nowhere. Just me, my brother Henry, and two hundred international tourists looking stupid in a dozen different languages." Cat: "Then two more people came to the table, the two boys I noticed at the airport. They were handsome, but they obviously knew it." In alternating chapters, sixteen-year-olds Cat and Noah give their very different versions of what happens when they find themselves thrown together as reluctant passengers on a cruise in the legendary Galapagos Islands.