Each Friday I share the link to a read-aloud preview of a book from SRCSA library. The “First-chapter Friday” selection for April 28, 2023 is Alice Austen Lived Here, by Alex Gino.
Sam is a middle-school student who is comfortable with their nonbinary identity, and their family has accepted it too. When their history teacher assigns as a project coming up with a proposal for the new statue honoring a historical Staten Islander (there is a contest involved), Sam and their friend TJ decide to focus on Alice Austen, a lesbian photographer, whose house on Staten Island is a museum — but Sam and TJ will have to overcome their teacher’s presumption that only straight males are eligible. Alice Austen Lived Here was a 2023 selection to the American Library Association’s Rainbow Project Book List, “an array of diverse stories and identities representing the LGBTQIA+ youth experience.”
