Book of the Day: Annie on My Mind

Liza is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art one day when she meets Annie Kenyon.  That's when everything starts to change.  Annie on My Mind is a love story, which charts a gradual, sweet crush evolve into a relationship.  For Liza, the emotions she feels around Annie are overwhelming.  "It was like a war inside me; I couldn't even recognize all the sides.  There was one that said, 'No this is wrong; you know it's wrong and bad and sinful,' and there was another that said it was happening too fast, and another that just wanted to stop thinking altogether and fling my arms around Annie and hold her forever." (93)

Liza knows she loves Annie, but doesn't know what her attraction to Annie means.  To learn more, she looks up "homosexuality" in her father's encyclopedia.  The entry entry surprised Liza, because "in that whole long article, the world 'love' wasn't used once.  That made me mad, it was as if whoever wrote the article didn't know that gay people actually love each other." (143)  Annie on My Mind is a classic in the field, and a warm, delightful story of one's first love.  The book's central message is "Don't let ignorance win--let love."


For a video reading of Annie on My Mind by a YA reader, click here.  To see what other readers thought about the book on Amazon, click here and on Library Thing, here.


Garden, Nancy.  Annie on my mind. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1982.