When you're sixteen and no one understands who you are, sometimes the only choice left is to run. If you're lucky, you find a place that accepts you, no questions asked. And if you're really lucky, that place has a drum set, a place to practice, and a place to sleep. For Kid, the streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, are that place. Over the course of two scorching summers, Kid falls hopelessly in love and then loses nearly everything and everyone worth caring about. But as summer draws to a close, Kid finally finds someone who can last beyond the sunset.
Brooklyn, Burning is a fearless and unconventional love story. Brezenoff never identifies the gender of his two main characters, and readers will draw their own conclusions about Kid and Scout. Whatever they decide, Brooklyn, Burning is not a book any teen reader will soon forget.
Brooklyn, Burning is the story of two summers in Brooklyn, two summers of fires, music, loss, and ultimately, love.
Fiction, Young Adult
Carolrhoda Lab ®
YAF058110, YAF058210, YAF011000
Author/Illustrator biography, Awards, Reviewed, and Starred Reviews
SSLI Book Award Honor Book, Commended, 2013
ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Gold Award, Winner, 2012
YALSA Best Books for Young Adults, Winner, 2012
ALA Rainbow List Top Ten, Winner, 2011
Kirkus Best Teen Books of the Year, Winner, 2011
Los Angeles Public Library Best of 2011: Young Adult Books, Winner, 2011
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"This will appeal to readers who enjoyed David Levithan's Love Is the Higher Law." —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
The Horn Book Magazine
"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
Reviewed on 1 October 2011
"Parts of Brooklyn are evocatively portrayed with descriptions that show Brezenoff intimately knows, or remembers, this part of New York and loves it." —VOYA
Reviewed on 1 September 2011
"The question raised by all this is not whether their love will last but, rather, do their genders and sexual identities matter." —Booklist
Reviewed on 15 August 2011
"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
Mpls.St.Paul
"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
Reviewed on 4 July 2011
"For readers with little use for labels, it's an intimate yet wonderfully open rock 'n' roll love story." —Publishers Weekly
Reviewed on 10 May 2011
"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
Bennett Madison
"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
Ellen Wittlinger
Reviewed on 16 December 2010
"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
Author: Steve Brezenoff
Steve Brezenoff has written several chapter books for young readers, and The Absolute Value of -1 is his first novel for teens. Though Steve grew up in a suburb on Long Island, he now lives with his wife, their kids, and their terrier, in St. Paul, Minnesota.