Brooklyn, Burning

“This will appeal to readers who enjoyed David Levithan’s Love Is the Higher Law.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

“A moving, personal story of friendship, loss, and love, Brezenoff’s novel is also a tender tribute to all LGBTQ youth.” —The Horn Book Magazine

“Parts of Brooklyn are evocatively portrayed with descriptions that show Brezenoff intimately knows, or remembers, this part of New York and loves it.” —VOYA

“The question raised by all this is not whether their love will last but, rather, do their genders and sexual identities matter.” —Booklist

“A lyrical, understated punk-kid love song to Brooklyn and to chosen family…. The tone is as raw, down-to-earth and transcendent as the music Scout and Kid ultimately make together.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Brooklyn, Burning, an edgy tale of star-crossed street kids unified by music and a desire to catch a break, speaks clearly to the urgency of adolescence.” —Mpls.St.Paul

“For readers with little use for labels, it’s an intimate yet wonderfully open rock ‘n’ roll love story.” —Publishers Weekly

“Steve Brezenoff’s Brooklyn, Burning is what I want out of a novel: it’s funny and sad (but not always when you expect it to be), plotted tight as a plumb line without ever letting you see that till the end, pops you with the surprises of human kindness and decency even more than it startles you with plunges into the depths. As good an example as you will find that the novel is the art that can go broad and deep at the same time, it tackles the kind of difficult question that only the novel can do: what will we do with all the unwanted talent and rejected love in the world, and how will the kids (and the Kids) cope when they find out they’re wanted after all? What happens when kids are loaded up with far more than anyone should have to bear, and they bear it, and go on? Like any good novel, it’s one particular, memorable, answer in a form so vivid it will stay with you forever. All that, and he did it for a bunch of kids, who will now probably sneak off and savor it all by themselves, as if it were for their generation and not for all time. Don’t let the kids hide this in the cellar; drag it upstairs where everyone can enjoy it.” —John Barnes , Printz Honoree

“Steve Brezenoff’s gorgeous, sad and hopeful Brooklyn, Burning will make you want to walk out the door and fall in love right now. It will also remind you that it’s totally possible. It’s a love letter to Brooklyn, a love letter to music booming from the basement, and most of all, a love letter to every kind of love. (But especially the punk rock kind.) Guess how I felt about it: <3.” —Bennett Madison

“A gritty but nuanced story of two years in the life of a street kid whose world veers from dream to nightmare and back again. Like Brooklyn in the summer, Brezenoff’s book is hot and intense.” —Ellen Wittlinger