Jessica Shiefauer’s book for Young Adults THE BOYS/POJKARNA is the winner of the August Prize 2011, in the category The Swedish Children’s or Young Adult Book of the Year.
During the day Kim and her girlfriends Bella and Momo put up with the boys’ teasing but at night they drink the nectar from a fantastic flower which turns them into boys. Kim can’t get enough of the freedom which a different body offers and as a boy she also falls in love with Tony. Together the two of them experience excitement and attraction but as a girl Kim does not interest Tony. Everything rapidly comes to a head for Kim, Tony, Bella and Momo and the whole thing escalates into a tremendous denouement. The Boys is a description of the teenage years like no other. It combines the excruciating commonplace with the beautifully magical in a tale of growing up, change, love and sisterhood.
“In a glowing and contemporary saga about love, death and rebirth Jessica Shiefauer helps her three teenage Orlando characters free themselves and explore the limits of the self. Together, and on their own, the three characters explore their genders, their bodies and their desires, beyond established boundaries. During the day they are “the girls”: the maladjusted, the exposed, the constantly observed. When night falls they become “the boys”: the anonymous observers.
..the borders of existence are – and must be permitted to be – so much larger than the volume restricted by the skin.”
Kajsa Berggren, Expressen, 2011-11-14