This guide will be of greater help to anyone working with young people today than to young people themselves. Free Your Mind comprises practical advice on topics ranging from self-acceptance to coming out to parents, friends, and at school to finding a place to live in the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community. The authors, both lesbian mothers and both involved in counselling youth, spoke with more than 50 young people, as well as parents, siblings, teachers, religious leaders, counsellors, and other adults. The book makes excellent use of this material. An appendix deals with issues related to religion and spirituality and examines positive and challenging ways that young people can make a difference in the continuing fight for gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights.

Free Your Mind is youth-friendly – it includes cartoons (such as Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse) and quotes from, and brief biographies of, famous gays, lesbians, and bisexuals – but it reads like a book that adults think teens should find utterly compelling. How much support a teen reader will find in knowing that Socrates, Virginia Woolf, and Ralph Waldo Emerson were gay, lesbian, or bisexual, I’m not sure. Still, there’s no question that the authors are well intentioned and Free Your Mind will provide great support when put in the hands of the right teen reader by the right adult ally.

Free Your Mind also has an extensive listing of resources, including agencies, web sites, organizations that provide information on AIDS, runaways, alcoholism and drug use, and support groups for parents. Most of this information will be of greater use to American rather than Canadian youth. Indeed, with the exceptions of Lynn Johnston’s cartoons, a handful of books and videos that allies can use with youth, and a brief bio of k.d. lang, the experiences of Canadian gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth don’t play a part in this book.

Still, it’s an excellent reference and resource collection that schools and libraries should have.