21 Proms

Illustrating the best and worst of the quintessential teen rite of passage, Levithan and Ehrenhaft guide readers through proms both avant-garde and traditional, cynical and inspiring, humorous and tragic. Traditional pink prom dress blends with fat girl anti-prom and compliments a primate prom acceptance movement, with plenty of heartbreaks and hookups in between. The pacing is frantic, the characterization is brief, and like a favorite song, the vignettes are over too quickly. Contributions from the hottest young adult authors will help to increase the appeal, but any teen who dreams of or dreads prom night will find these stories compelling and refreshing.

Reviewed by Jocelyn Pearce for TeensReadToo.com

21 PROMS tells the stories of, well, twenty-one proms. Twenty-one fantastic authors contributed to this collection, and each and every one of the stories is fabulous and enjoyable. A few, however, really stick out in my mind after finishing this book.

Holly Black's IN VODKA VERITAS is a creepy story about an evil Latin club. "MOM CALLED, SHE SAID YOU HAVE TO GO TO PROM" is Adrienne Maria Vrettos' contribution to the book. It's a great story that manages, in just a few pages, to create wonderfully three-dimensional characters that I'd love to read more about. BETTER BE GOOD TO ME by Daniel Ehrenhaft is a brilliantly written and romantic story. Aimee Friedman's THREE FATES is a hilarious story show more about what happens when Abby ends up with three dates instead of going dateless the way she thought she would. THE QUESTION is Brent Hartinger's one-act play that would be wonderful to see performed. PRIMATE THE PROM is Libba Bray's very interesting, original, and unusual story of a boy going to prom with his boyfriend -- who just happens to be a gorilla. THE BACKUP DATE, by Leslie Margolis, is a fabulously well-written story about Jasmine, a whiny but completely believable character, going to prom with her boyfriend and brother's best friend.

As you can see, there are quite a few fabulous stories in this collection. The two that I loved the most, however, were these: Melissa de la Cruz told the absolutely true and absolutely hilarious story of her prom in A SIX-PACK OF BUD, A FIFTH OF WHISKEY, AND ME. THE GREAT AMERICAN MORP is John Green's absolutely brilliant story and one of my two favorites about a couple of girls having a "morp," a party that is a backwards prom. In this funny and fantastic story, he introduces characters that I'd absolutely love to see again.

I did notice one thing that is interesting, and I want to know why this is: people seem much more likely to write about two gay guys than two lesbians. Quite a few of the stories had gay guys in them, but I can't think of any about two girls who wanted to go to prom together; I don't know why. In fact, I can only think of one book that I've read where the main character is a lesbian: KEEPING YOU A SECRET, by Julie Anne Peters.

A good short story, one that has good characters or a hold-your-breath-suspenseful plot or something, has to do it in just a few pages. These were some of the best short stories I can ever remember reading! show less

A series of 21 short stories about prom. Makes sense, right? I enjoyed almost all of the stories and together, they made up a nice collection of both good and bad prom stories. The collection fit nicely together and the stories flowed quite well from one to the other. I won't go into detail about all of them, but here are the ones I liked best: 'You are a prom queen, dance dance dance' by Elizabeth Craft, 'In Vodka Veritas' by Holly Black, 'Three fates' by Aimee Friedman, 'Shutter' by Will Leitch, Prom for fat girls by Rachel Cohn, 'Lost Sometimes' by David Levithan, and 'The Great American Morp' by John Green.

I absolutely could not finish it. It did NOT read like a book geared for young adults, or at least not for this generation of young adults. The writing quality is good, but the tone of the book really turned me off. I made it probably 3/4 of the way through before I was so depressed I had to quit. High school may not be great, but this was miserable.

I really enjoyed this book. Not all the stories were fabulous (Brett Hartinger's one act play was a particular low note), but I enjoyed many of the stories. Standouts for me were David Levithan's story Lost Sometimes and John Green's The Great American Morp.

Like all short stories some good, some bad. I didn't breeze through, put it down about midway. The story that stood out and that I remember is by Adrienne Maria Vrettos.

Contains one outstanding short story ("How I Wrote to Toby" by E. Lockhart), a few good stories, and several that just didn't appeal to me very much.