This is the based-on-true-events story of Harry and Craig, two seventeen-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record – all of which is narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS. While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teen boys dealing with languishing long-term relationships, coming out, navigating gender identity, and falling deeper into the digital rabbit hole of gay hook-up sites – all while the kissing former couple tries to figure out their own feelings for each other.
Two Boys Kissing has frequently been challenged. The book has landed on the American Library Association’s Top Ten List of Challenged Books three times – in 2015, 2016, and 2018 – because of homosexual and sexually explicit content.
In 2014, a parent of a child at an American high school appealed for Two Boys Kissing to be removed from the school district’s libraries because of the cover artwork, which shows two boys kissing, violated the school’s rules against public displays of affection, and because the book contains 117 references to words like “sex” and “kiss.” A committee ultimately decided that the book would remain on the shelf.
Levithan, D. (2013). Two Boys Kissing [audiobook]. Listening Library.