"Love is a dangerous angel"

I honestly can't remember when I first heard of the Weetzie Bat books. It just seemed like they had always been there, in the back of my mind, waiting to be uncovered. But it would really take me quite some time before I actually went out there and got myself a copy.

I only got my hands on Dangerous Angels, a compilation of all the Weetzie Bat books, a few months ago, and it would take me a few weeks more before I would start reading it. Now I'm kicking myself for not doing it much earlier.

In case you're not aware of them, the Weetzie Bat books are made up of Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop. All the books are told through the eyes if Weetzie and the members of her family, specifically her children Cherokee and Witch Baby, as well as her gay best friend Dirk McDonald.

We are first introduced to them in Weetzie Bat, where we follow Weetzie and Dirk as they look for the love of their lives in the city of Los Angeles. The other books revolve around this central theme of love, with variations that give each novel a flavor of its own.

Witch Baby, for instance, has the main character looking not for romantic love, but for love from her parents. Cherokee and the Goat Guys have the characters grappling with adolescent love and their self-esteem. Missing Angel Juan is about loving someone enough to let them be on their own, while Baby Be-Bop is about a young Dirk struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality.

After reading Weetzie Bat, I had initially thought that this series was merely overhyped and not really as good as everyone made it out to be. Despite being a charming work, I found Weetzie Bat to be a little too thin -- in plot and characterization -- for me to keep on going.

It's a good thing that I still kept on reading, though, because the series keeps on getting better and better with each book. Block has the ability to balance her whimsical prose and the heavy topics she often takes on, and the combination makes the books moving without being too overly heavy for younger readers.

And Block certainly isn't afraid to take on some pretty daunting topics. In Cherokee and the Goat Guys there is a harrowing scene filled with drugs, booze, and underage sex, while the latter chapters of Weetzie Bat talk about the AIDS crisis, if in a roundabout way.

My personal favorites are Missing Angel Juan and Baby Be-Bop. It is in these books that Block is at her very best, telling stories of heartbreak, loneliness, and homophobia in hopeful tones usually reserved for fairy tales.

I also love how Block tackles homosexuality in her novels. When Dirk tells Weetzie that he's gay, Weetzie's reply is a simple: "It doesn't matter one bit, honey-honey." Then the two decide to look for boys together. I can only imagine how empowering that is for a young closeted gay man reading these novels for the first time.

And it's not just gay men. All throughout the series there are lesbians, bisexuals, there's even a transgender couple with a baby. It's a delightful and idealized world that one can't help but wish for.

The fact that Block doesn't hesitate from showing the dark side of life either -- Dirk, for instance, is almost mauled to death by a homophobic gang of neo-Nazis -- just makes her idealized Los Angeles even more precious and beautiful.

Dangerous Angels is certainly something I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone looking for a good read. Multilayered, poetic, and unafraid to tackle some pretty sensitive topics, it is a young adult book that is both challenging and entertaining.