Come read the light-hearted love poems from a teen's perspective: the female perspective, "A Girl's Tears, Her Song," and "A Boy's Body, His Words." This is a refreshing take on young love and poetry. Gary Soto doesn't disappoint! An experienced literary poet of 11 adult poetry books, Soto captures the essentials of young love: flirting, broken hearts, ambiguous communication, infatuation. Keep in mind that each poem is written from the perspective of a new teen. Since this is a fairly benign take on heterosexual teen romance, I wonder what my LGBTQ students would think about this? ( )

Partly Cloudy: Poems of Love and Longing, by Gary Soto, is a small book of poetry written through the voices of young girls and boys as they make their first steps towards young love. The poems are all very cute: anticipating first kisses, holding hands, lying in the grass. They are also sometimes sad: days without that special someone, break-ups, unrequited love. Basically every poem is relatively simple and is written in the first person point of view, either from a girl’s perspective or a boy’s perspective. To me, it didn’t seem like the poems showed enough variety, often times seeming to be written all by the same character or person (which they were all technically written by one author, but still). It still is a rather cute collection, and would probably appeal to all those young teens or tweens wrapped up in their own romantic moments. ( )