When David Levithan was a junior in high school, he found himself bored in physics class, so he started flipping through his physics book and "finding as many romantic notions as possible." He started writing a story, and, by February, he was done. He shared this Valentine's Day treat with friends, and they asked for another. A tradition was born: he wrote a new short story every year for his friends and family.

How They Met, and Other Stories by David Levithan is more than just a collection of eighteen tales written by the same hand. The author prefers to call them as "stories about love" rather than "love stories," and I agree. This anthology is a many-splendored thing, a testament to different kinds of love: first crushes, the love of family, coincidental meetings, set-ups, break-ups, and make-ups. The Memory Dance celebrates a marriage of forty years, while Lost Sometimes (previously released in the 21 Proms anthology) has someone looking for more in his relationship.

As he did in The Realm of Possibility, Levithan has once again captured multiple voices and made it seem effortless. He offers first-person, second-person, and third-person narratives, with protagonists ranging in age from their teen years to their twilight years.

Starbucks Boy was my favorite piece in this collection, with its sweet story of a six-year-old who knows what (or who) is best for her new baby-sitter. The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes and What a Song Can Do also vied for my affection.

The stories are not connected, and yet they are: By their underlying currents. By what they envoke (empathy and sympathy, tears and laughter) in readers. Each story has a different piece of the heart; when put together, they make for the loveliest of puzzles.

How They Met, and Other Stories is recommended for teens and adults.

Excerpts

Read an excerpt from Starbucks Boy at David's MySpace blog.

Here is one of my favorite passages from the story What a Song Can Do:

This is what a song can do. Our moments
are music, and sometimes - just sometimes -
we can catch them and put them
into some everlasting form. If I didn't
have music, I don't know if
I could ever be truly happy,
and if I didn't have these moments,
I would never find music. It's everywhere,
in the air between us, waiting
to be sung.

Footnotes

David is going on tour in February 2008. Visit his website for event dates and details.

I had the opportunity to interview Rachel Cohn and David Levithan twice, once in 2006 and again in 2007.

For similar anthologies, check out my Quick Reads and Short Stories booklist. Also pick up some Verse Novels.

I was flattered to have been selected to contribute to YA Books Central. I'm kicking things off with this review of a novel by Lisa Shanahan.

Swans and tempests and camouflage, oh my! The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It (previously published as My Big Birkett in the author's native Australia) is a delicious blend of comedy and drama brought to life by a cast of outrageous characters, save one, who is trying her best to remain sane.

Years ago, a girl name Debbie dated a boy named Birkett. After Debbie broke up with him, he serenaded her at midnight with twenty original poems based on her name, waking up her entire family and all of her neighbors in the process. Ever since then, whenever anyone in her family gets overly emotional or upset, they say they're "chucking a birkett."

Fast forward to the present day, when Debbie announces that she's getting married to Brian, a man she's known for only one month.

But this isn't Debbie's story. This is about her younger sister, Gemma, and the sweet, terrible, glorious year in which she blushed, crushed, and survived.

At fourteen, Gemma's too old to be a flower girl. Instead of being a maid of honor like her sister's best friends, she's told she'll be wearing a swan costume, complete with webbed feet.

That's not the only bird flying into her life. Here comes Raven, one of the infamous De Head boys. All of the De Head kids are named after fowl and have foul reputations. When Gemma tries out for her school's production of The Tempest at the suggestion of a cute classmate, it is Raven's eye she catches.

Like Gemma, there's more to this book that meets the eye. An embarrassment of riches, you could say. This is a lovely book. Shanahan balanced funny and serious plotlines very believably, reminding us that life can be sweet one moment and terrible the next - and then sweet again. With humor akin to Susan Juby's Alice series and characters that stick with you like those from novels by Sarah Dessen, this book is truly glorious.

I have included this title on various booklists: Tough Issues for Teens, From a Land Down Under, Comedies for Teens, and Shakespearean Spinoffs.