The Lerner Blog

Academics have never been Sofie’s strong point; she’s too busy spending all of her free time with her boyfriend, Paul, the captain of her Surrey high school’s soccer team. When her English teacher implements a new program that pairs her with straight-A student Clea, Sofie worries about how Paul will react to her hanging out with the only out lesbian at school. Sofie is as surprised as Paul at how close she and Clea quickly become.

When Sofie discovers that Clea is planning a road trip to check out some American colleges over the winter break, she invites herself along, causing more issues with Paul. But it’s only after a college student asks if Sofie identifies as a “femme” lesbian that she starts to question her own sexuality and her relationship with both Clea and Paul.

Downloadable Teaching Resource

For as long as they’ve been friends, Elias has been relying on his buddy Jordan. It’s Jordan’s mom who takes him in when his own mother is on an alcoholic binge; it’s Jordan who acts as the brother and role model that Elias doesn’t have. But now they’ve gone too far, and a schoolyard fight has landed them both in jail. The judge gives them a warning: Shape up, or face time in juvie. The clock is already ticking when Jordan gets his girlfriend pregnant and then comes up with a big time takedown that’ll set them both up for life. For Elias, it’s not worth the risk. But can he free himself of Jordan’s influence in time?

Downloadable Teaching Resource

A timely new resource for helping kids deal with issues surrounding gender identity and how girls can cope with the conflicts that arise when we question what it means to be female.

Do mosquitoes bite guys more than girls? Which sex is better at diapering babies, remembering birthdays, or hammering nails? Explore the ways that environment, experience, neurology, physiology, and genetics shape gender behavior—in expected and unexpected ways.

A timely new resource for helping kids deal with issues surrounding gender identity and how boys can cope with the conflicts that arise when we question what it means to be male.

What happened when a former slave took beat-up old instruments and gave them to orphans? A great American art form was born. Hey, Charleston! brings this fascinating moment of African American history to life.

Downloadable Teaching Resource

Sephora Golding lives in the shadow of her unbelievably beautiful mother. Even though they scrape by in the seedier part of Venice Beach, she’s always felt lucky. As a child, she imagined she was a minor but beloved character in her mother’s fairy tale. But now, at sixteen, the fairy tale is less Disney and more Grimm. And she wants the story to be her own.

Then she meets Felix, and the fairy tale takes a turn she never imagined.

Sometimes, a story is just a way to hide the unspeakable in plain sight.

Today, LGBTQ+ athletes are everywhere. But it hasn’t always been this way. Social attitudes, institutional policies, and laws have been slow to change, but now LGBTQ+ athletes are finding opportunity and success.

More than 30 African American girls ages 11 to 16 were confined in a stockade after taking part in Civil Rights protests in 1963. While they were imprisoned, their commitment to the struggle for equality was put to the test.