Wersba has written several other novels that explore similar themes as Whistle Me Home. Rita Formica, another Sag Harbor outsider, suffers a case of unrequited love in Fat: A Love Story. Two later books about Rita, Love Iis the Crooked Thing and Beautiful Losers follow her through a later, more successful relationship. Like Noli Brown, Heidi Rosenbloom in Just Be Gorgeous gains selfawareness through her relationship with a gay male friend.

There are a number of books that address the issue of a heterosexual teenager falling in love with a someone of a different orientation. In one of her few contemporary stories, historical novelist Ann Rinaldi tells of sixteen-year-old Brie's crush on a gay boy in The Good Side of My Heart. John finds himself infatuated with Marisol, a self-identified lesbian in Ellen Wittlinger's Hard Love, an Honor Book for the Printz Award, first presented in...