Reviewed by Long Nguyen for TeensReadToo.com
The title will make you laugh, the story will provoke you to think.
Dylan lives the good life: great family, amazing boyfriend, and a best friend she can rely on. That is until she confronts her real identity, when she admits to herself that she prefers girls rather than boys. Beth Goobie, in a stellar effort, portrays the life of a lesbian teenager too afraid of the repercussions upon her life if and when she comes out to her friends and family.
Dylan doesn't want to make her life any more difficult but her best friend, Jocelyn, has become presently absent in her life; she isn't able to give her boyfriend what he wants, no matter how hard she tells herself she can do it; and things only get more complicated when Dylan volunteers to design the new book display for the school library.
HELLO, GROIN, along with a voicing out of the wrongness of such a social taboo as being homosexual, is a fight for freedom from censorship. The display Dylan creates says something important, both to her and to certain others, whether they were contributors of ideas or the understanding kind. But when the school principal decides to censor parts of the display, rumors begin to spread about Dylan, and she begins to let her secret take control of her life, in a negative way.
Goobie does a fantastic job in portraying a character that is very much believable in her thoughts and actions. She speaks out against censorship and how hard it is on a person who, along with the regular angst and struggles of being a teenager, must also now ask herself who she is and whether or not self-sacrifice for the people around her is more important than making herself feel human and allowing herself to be, simply, herself.
HELLO, GROIN is a thought-provoking novel that asks questions that are important to face in this day and age of social faux pas and suggests a few select answers which readers should certainly take upon themselves to consider wholeheartedly. HELLO, GROIN is well told story by a great novelist.
The title will make you laugh, the story will provoke you to think.
Dylan lives the good life: great family, amazing boyfriend, and a best friend she can rely on. That is until she confronts her real identity, when she admits to herself that she prefers girls rather than boys. Beth Goobie, in a stellar effort, portrays the life of a lesbian teenager too afraid of the repercussions upon her life if and when she comes out to her friends and family.
Dylan doesn't want to make her life any more difficult but her best friend, Jocelyn, has become presently absent in her life; she isn't able to give her boyfriend what he wants, no matter how hard she tells herself she can do it; and things only get more complicated when Dylan volunteers to design the new book display for the school library.
HELLO, GROIN, along with a voicing out of the wrongness of such a social taboo as being homosexual, is a fight for freedom from censorship. The display Dylan creates says something important, both to her and to certain others, whether they were contributors of ideas or the understanding kind. But when the school principal decides to censor parts of the display, rumors begin to spread about Dylan, and she begins to let her secret take control of her life, in a negative way.
Goobie does a fantastic job in portraying a character that is very much believable in her thoughts and actions. She speaks out against censorship and how hard it is on a person who, along with the regular angst and struggles of being a teenager, must also now ask herself who she is and whether or not self-sacrifice for the people around her is more important than making herself feel human and allowing herself to be, simply, herself.
HELLO, GROIN is a thought-provoking novel that asks questions that are important to face in this day and age of social faux pas and suggests a few select answers which readers should certainly take upon themselves to consider wholeheartedly. HELLO, GROIN is well told story by a great novelist.
