Bibliographic Information
Publisher: Groundwood Books
Publication year: 2003
ISBN: 978-0888997241
Translated by: Shelley Tanaka
Reader’s Annotation
Fifteen-year-old Miriam is growing bored of her small German town until the arrival of a new student, mysterious and intriguing Laua. Laura sparks a chain of events in Miriam’s life that cause Miriam to spiral into self doubt while simultaneously finding her true self.
Plot Summary
Miriam and the friends she has known since kindergarten spend every day the same way: school, home, and the occasional party with all the usual attendees. Life’s monotony is beginning to smother Miriam. She wishes that something exciting would happen to her, like a great adventure or a first love. Then she meets Laura, a mysterious new addition to school who sparks Miriam’s interest as more than a friend. Together with Laura’s best friend Phillip, the girls plan a weekend getaway to the city. During the trip secrets are revealed, feelings are shared, and suspicions confirmed, bringing Laura and Miriam closer than before. The real question is, can their relationship remain blissful after they return to the city?
Critical Evaluation
The beauty of Girl From Mars lies in its simplicity. Setting aside the gender of the two main characters, Bach has made it a fairly usual high school love story. She makes Miriam’s first love with Laura just as confusing, scary, and wonderful as it would have been with Phillip or another male character. A small amount of judgement on the part of Miriam’s friends makes it into the story, but realistically no more than would happen if Miriam were suddenly spending more time with a new boyfriend than her friends. This is a significant characteristic of the novel in terms of LGBTQ+ representation. By normalizing Miriam and Laura’s relationship, Bach is showing young adult readers that falling in love with someone of the same gender is just as natural for some people as falling in love with someone of another gender. Young adult LGBTQ+ literature is important to the genre as a whole because members of the queer community deserve to see characters like themselves in their literature, and Bach has shown them successfully in Girl From Mars.
Author Information
Tamara Bach has been writing since she was sixteen. She spent her teen years living in Oppenheim -- a small town very much like Miriam's -- and, like Miriam, wishing she lived in a big city. Today she lives and writes in Berlin, where she also works in young people's television and theater.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/884754.Tamara_Bach
Genre
Fiction
Foreign Fiction
Curriculum Ties
Health
Booktalking Ideas
Relate to the young adult audience about how exciting, scary, and confusing first love can be. Read a passage that is universally understandable to anyone who has ever had a crush. Then reveal Miriam and Laura as a lesbian couple to solidify the idea that love is love, regardless of gender. Then give a rating from 1-5 and tell the audience why this is my rating, and take questions.
Reading Level/Interest Age
School Library Journal: Grade 9 and up
Challenging Issues
LGBTQ+
Sexual Content and/or Nudity
Preparing for Potential Challenges
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-potential-challenges.html
http://jeselynsminiyacollection.blogspot.com/p/preparing-for-specific-challenges-lgbtq.html
Why the Item Was Chosen
As I mentioned in the Critical Evaluation, Bach’s novel has all the elements of a mainstream high school story about first love, except for the gender of both main characters being female. I feel this form of representation is very important for young adult readers in all stages of the coming out process. It is important for queer youth to realize there is nothing inherently wrong with their feelings toward others of their gender. They should have to worry about their orientation being considered unusual (at best) or deviant (at worst) at a time when they are dealing with the countless other uncertainties of adolescence. For the same reason, Girl From Mars would be an enjoyable and possibly eye-opening read for straight allies to the LGBTQ+ community. I included it in my collection as an example of a peaceful, regular love story that just happens to be queer.
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