Blue Lawn (Tui) - Softcover

William Taylor has written many children's books and has been published worldwide. He won the New Zealand Library Association's Esther Glen Medal for Agnes the Sheep. His titles have been honoured by both the New York Public Library and the American Library Association. William Taylor used to be a teacher, and he lives in Raurimu near Mt Ruapehu in the central North Island.

Grade 9 Up-A study of a powerfully charged friendship between two teenaged boys in rural New Zealand. From the moment 15-year-old David Mason sees Theo Meyer, an outsider who smokes, drinks, and drives fast, David is drawn to him. Theo is also attracted to clean-living David. A violent locker-room confrontation between the two betrays a mutual passion that neither one quite understands, or is willing to accept. David soon becomes a regular at Theo's house, where he meets the boy's grandmother, Gretel, a Holocaust survivor. As the seasons change, measured by Gretel's garden and her lawn of grape-hyacinths, David and Theo's relationship grows, and both teens are aware of its sexual energy. While David is so well adjusted to the possibility that he may be homosexual it strains believability, Theo struggles with the idea of being "queer." When Gretel discovers the teens together, she separates them and their friendship is suspended. Their relationship is symbolized by the blooming of the blue lawn, a testament to the beauty in being different. While David and Theo come across as multilayered individuals, other characterizations are less successful. David's parents are blithely supportive background figures and his sister is immediately accepting of his homosexuality. While there are too few positive examples of coming out, here it is too pat. The boys' intimacy goes remarkably unnoticed and unchallenged in their school and in the larger community. This absence of social conflict makes the thread of Holocaust history awkward rather than integrative. A thoughtful, if slightly flawed character study.
Jennifer A. Fakolt, Denver Public Library
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