Young and smart: how can queer kids and parents fend off boredom through the long summer vacation? Check out these young adult titles.

Move over, Judy Blume. From wet dreams to lesbian moms, young adult fiction has come a long way. Whether you're a gay parent or a queer kid, YA novels in the past few years have done an ever better job of bringing out stories that touch the lives of queer youth and the people who love them. If you know any teens or tweens with LGBT interests, here are a few new books that might compete with Harry Potter for their summertime attention--and might also teach them a thing or two.

Brian Sloan's Tale of Two Summers (Simon and Schuster) is an engaging, funny, and sexy story told as a blog exchange between two best friends, Chuck and Hal, who are separated for the summer. The talented, hetero Chuck is away at theater camp, while his best gay pal Hal is stuck at home in suburban Washington, D.C., taking driver's ed at their high school. The blogging format gives a feeling of immediacy and credibility to the highs and lows of summer. Hal's adventures with his chic French friend, Henri, remind us how serious and delicious young love is. That, combined with Chuck's melodrama with his leading ladies in Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along and the ups and downs of BFFs, makes Tale of Two Summers a great read.

Pay It Forward author Catherine Ryan Hyde takes readers on a cross-country adventure in the poignant Becoming Chloe (Knopf). Two homeless teens, Jordan and Chloe, escape New York City--which has battered them both--and head for the road, trying to answer the question, Is life more beautiful or ugly? The kids' one confidant is Chloe's psychiatrist, who approves of their journey as a desperate attempt to save the girl from giving up entirely on what has been a difficult, crippling life.

Christian Burch's debut novel, The Manny Files (Atheneum), is being billed as "David Sedaris meets Mary Poppins," but in this case a spoonful of saccharin doesn't help the reading go down. The "manny"--yes, a male nanny--is too cute for anyone's good in this otherwise witty tale of a young family with four kids trying to make it in the burbs. Our hero, Keats, the smallest kid in his class, has an eye for style and for feng shui. His fellow characters are fleshed out pretty well, and there are some poignant moments in the story. Younger readers may appreciate The Manny Files, but anyone too old for a manny will find it over-the-top.