Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Mark Kendrick, author of Desert Sons and Into This World We're Thrown

Ring Around the Moon by Anya Weinstein, is the first installment of a series called Weeds Like Words. It follows thirteen year old Asher Denmont as he enters eighth grade. Asher is the quintessential follower, a good Christian, pious to a fault, yet terribly out of his element now. For puberty has caught up with him, and with it, the knowledge that he’s not like the other boys. So, Asher projects himself into a new crowd of rowdy friends led by the nasty Tucker, and attempts to rationalize his way out of the sure knowledge that he’s gay. But it doesn’t work. As the school year progresses, and as Asher becomes a solid part of his new crowd, learning to be as nasty as Tucker, and all the while growing ever more fond of him, he’s unaware that his affection and attention is about to backfire on him. In addition, he’s unaware that Kat Wilder, called Death Girl by some because of her Goth persona, is much more mature than he and has an insight into his imagined hell. As a result will she become an unexpected ally?

This story is much more than a simple high school tale. It drives home very important 21st century issues. Homophobia has become an epidemic in the
public schools. Being gay, or even being thought of as gay, brings with it ostracizing like never before. For a young boy growing up gay, without peers to turn to, with the perceived threat of God himself dooming a ‘good’ boy to Hell, with Christian parents teaching their children that gays choose to be gay, all of which is in Asher's world, who can he turn to? Unfortunately, suicide is an easy route out of this Catch-22. In fact, Asher toys with it ever so briefly.

There are many elements that make this story engrossing and fascinating. It’s a slice of life told by a young author who witnesses homophobic language casually thrown around every day in high school. It’s a tale fashioned from a real life drama. It contains a whole host of characters, each with their own past and hauntingly real present—due to the excellent way the author fleshes them out. It’s a lesson to those who think that terrible words, aimed wantonly at those perceived to be different, have no meaning; that shunning a peer because of prejudice and stereotypes takes precedence over empirical evidence or friendship.

Once inside Ring Around the Moon you will be moved, saddened, and ultimately enlightened. Perhaps you will even be motivated to help stop the open discrimination of gay people that is still publicly-sanctioned and even encouraged by some in this country. Lessons can be learned within the covers of this story. Important ones.