How Far Is Berkeley?

Overview

How Far Is Berkeley? is a 1977 young adult novel by Helen Chetin. The local record describes twelve-year-old Michael moving with her mother to Berkeley in the early 1970s, living in a communal household, and visiting a women's coffeehouse where lesbians are present. Public bibliography supports the Berkeley setting, the communal-household premise, and the title's later inclusion in LGBTQIA+ children's-resource lists. The record is best read as a cautious context item: it helps visitors see how feminist, communal, and lesbian social worlds could appear around young characters before the better-known wave of explicit LGBTQ-family picture books.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Berkeley As Setting

The Berkeley setting is supported by both the local catalog and a Berkeley Public Library fiction bibliography. The public bibliography identifies the protagonist as Michael Blyth and describes her life in a communal household with a mother connected to the University of California, Berkeley. That setting matters because the collection often records family life through houses, neighborhoods, schools, and public institutions rather than through identity labels alone.^[1][4]

Queer Context Through Bibliography

The ALA Rainbow Round Table bibliography describes the novel's women's coffeehouse context and notes the presence of lesbians. The page therefore treats the item as a context record, not as a confirmed lesbian-parent novel. That distinction is important. The available sources support a young reader encountering adult women's-community spaces; they do not, by themselves, support stronger claims about the whole plot or its reception.^[3][1]

Publication Trail

The title has a public trail across Open Library, copyright records, historical bibliography, and library resource lists. Those sources agree on Helen Chetin and 1977, while some differ in title punctuation and work grouping. The record is useful partly because it shows how a relatively small young adult novel can survive through scattered metadata. For a collection page, those scattered traces are enough to identify the book but not enough to replace examination of the held copy.^[2][5][6]

Timeline

1. Early 1970sStory settingPublic and local descriptions place the story in Berkeley in the early 1970s.^[3][4]
2. 1977PublicationHow Far Is Berkeley? was published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.^[2][5]
3. 1978Historical index trailThe title appears in the Interracial Books for Children Bulletin index.^[6]
4. Later bibliographyLGBTQIA+ resource listingThe ALA Rainbow Round Table later included the title in a children's LGBTQIA+ resource bibliography.^[3]

Bibliographic Trail

Available public records identify the 1977 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich publication; the local copy can refine punctuation, pagination, and jacket details.

Citation

How Far Is Berkeley?. Helen Chetin. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-192.

Sources

1. Local collection catalog record for How Far Is Berkeley · catalog
2. Open Library work record for How Far Is Berkeley? · library
3. ALA Rainbow Round Table, LGBTQIA+ Resources for Children · bibliography
4. Berkeley Public Library, Fiction Set in Berkeley · bibliography
5. Catalog of Copyright Entries, 1977 Books and Pamphlets · bibliography
6. Interracial Books for Children Bulletin index · bibliography
7. ERIC bibliography record mentioning How Far Is Berkeley? · bibliography
8. FictionDB author listing for Helen Chetin · bibliography