5 coming of age stories about teens dealing with/ experiencing identity, family relationships, homosexuality, violence, drugs, sex, loss, and friendship/love. The stories stress confidence, loving oneself and valuing one's own skills and abilities. Music and Film production figure prominently, as does the magic of the Los Angeles setting.

A Necklace of Kisses -- Weetzie Bat years later -- provides a positive sequel to this memorable series of books. ( )

One of my all time favorites. Also a book I have read multiple times. ( )

Weetzie Bat: I went into this expecting, well, a story. A fairy tale, as promised by the summary. Instead...I kind of found a jumble of gibberish. Parts (the decipherable ones) of the gibberish were interesting, parts were just weird. This was horribly description heavy, and looking back, I still really can't figure out where the *plot* is. It seems...quite pointless, really. I thought it really tried way too hard to be quirky and it shows. The thing I did like was the fast pace, although I really would have liked to get to know the characters more.

Witch Baby: I did not like the POV shift. Again, if they're entitled the Weetzie Bat books, they should be in Weetzie's point of view, and I think that sort of continuity would have worked a lot better, instead of the rampant disconnectivity between the stories. This one was also very plotless, in addition to being predictable. Nothing special.

Cherokee Bat: Again, absolutely nothing special. Still plotless (this really more than most of the others). It should have stayed in Weetzie's point of view, honestly, Witch Baby and Cherokee are just *dull*. The original three at least had an interesting story (particularly Weetzie and Dirk, I would have loved to see that explored more!). I just didn't care about what happened here.

Missing Angel Juan: Oh, boy was I relieved to see first person! This story moved along very nicely and kept me interested. It really starts to become evident here that while the stories are advertised as fairy tales, there's really *nothing* supernatural about them other than Witch-Baby being called a witch. That's really it.

Baby Be-Bop: Surprisingly enough, this actually turned out to be one of my favorites. I liked that we got to go back to the roots (although the placement was strange, shouldn't this have come first, or at least second?) of the story. Parts of this were bad. They were just random, in a bad, non-quirky, non-interesting, thoroughly confusing way. But the ending, the ending was just too sweet.

Overall thoughts: I was highly disappointed. I expected...a series. This seemed like just pointless drabbles. Still, as pointed out in the end, maybe it's just supposed to be stories, everyone's life stories? I would have loved to see interconnectivity in these life stories, though. I feel like a huge opportunity was wasted.

Weetzie Bat: 4.5/5
Witch Baby: 3/5
Cherokee Bat: 1.5/5
Missing Angel Juan: 4/5
Baby Be-Bop: 4.5/5

Overall: 3.5/5 ( )

I searched 5 years for this book before finally hunting it down in Borders, Times Square, KL.
This really is a book of love. The lyrical and mystical stories deal with real-life issues; they sing the songs in our hearts, crying with tears of sorrow and of joy. Colourful and imaginative, descriptive and magical; I lost myself in the world of Weetzie and Dirk, Cherokee and Witch Baby, to name a few of the characters. It's a fantastic bed-side book to help you dream.

This novel is actually five young adult novellas bound into one volume. The first Weetzie Bat is about the title character and her family and friends. The second is Witch Baby about one of her daughters. After reading these I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on, so I talked to an English teacher who had just finished reading these books. She recommended I read the last one Baby Be-Bop about Weetzie’s best friends, housemates and the fathers of her other daughter Cherokee. Dirk and Duck are both lonely very young gay boys without stories to tell, or so they believe, until they tell their stories and get together. Baby Be-Bop was very special, but this quote comes from Weetzie Bat and gives a feeling for how oddly this book is written. Sometimes it feels like poetry, sometimes like fantasy, sometimes hyper-realism, sometimes magic realism.
"He kissed her.
A kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pier heat. A kiss about chocolate when you haven’t eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm trees speeding by, trailing pink clouds when you drive down the Strip sizzling with champagne. A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs." ( )