Middle Grade

The Cookie Crumbles

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by Tracy Badua and Alechia Dow
First sentence: “Generally speaking, cookies don’t kill people.”
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Content: There is talk of almost-murder, and there are some intense situations. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Laila loves to bake. Lucy is a budding reporter. They both want to get into the prestigious Sunderland boarding school, and the cookie competition hosted by the school, with the grand prize of a scholarship, is the only way they can make it work. The plan was for Laila to bake and be brilliant and for Lucy to write and be brilliant. What they didn’t anticipate was one of the judges – Chef Remy – almost dying after eating one of Laila’s cookies. Now, they need to figure out who tried to kill Chef Remy (it wasn’t Laila!) – especially since there was a storm that wiped out all the ways to get into and out of Sunderland.

This was a fun little mystery. The stakes were high – a lot of the other kids had motives to hurt Chef Remy – but it wasn’t so high that it would scare younger kids. The clues were there to figure it out if you were paying attention (I did), but it was clever enough to keep me entertained. I liked that the authors conceived of a clever way to get parents out of the picture – it was kind of like a sleep-away camp for the competition – so that it wasn’t weird that the kids were running around the school by themselves. I liked the alternating chapters between Laila and Lucy, and I thought it was all done very well.

A really solid Middle Grade mystery.

Audiobook: Buffalo Dreamer

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by Violet Duncan
Read by Ashley Callingbull
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Content: There are some tough subjects, including the residential schools, but they are handled in an age-appropriate way. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Summer is looking forward to a relaxing summer at the rez in Alberta where her mom grew up. But this year, there is a change: they have discovered a mass grave at a closed-down residential school where Summer’s grandfather was forced to attend. Additionally, Summer is having vivid dreams about a girl who ran away from a residential school and walked through a blizzard to escape.

It’s not a long book or even a harrowing one. But it is a sweet story about respecting and learning history, even (or maybe especially) hard history. Summer’s mom and aunties doesn’t think she’s ready to learn the history, and her grandfather is hesitant to speak about it, but when Summer shares the dreams, they are more willing to admit that talking about the hard and painful history can be a healing thing. I also appreciated learning about Summer’s heritage and family traditions as we went along; Duncan was excellent at weaving the small details in with the larger story.

The narrator was excellent as well; I really love listening to books by Native authors in audio because I know I would have no idea how to pronounce some of the words. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Ultraviolet

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by Aida Salazar
First sentence: “Who invented love, anyway?”
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Content: There is some sexual objectification of middle-school girls by middle-school boys. It’s in the YA section (grades 6-8) of the bookstore.

At the start of eighth grade Elio Selis starts noticing changes. Specifically girls. There are other changes too, with his body and with his friends, but all of a sudden girls are on his radar. Camellia in particular. He most definitely likes her, and she likes him back. Things are perfect for a while – ultraviolet, Elio things – but then things go south. Camellia takes up with a guy that Elio thinks is trash, and his heart is broken. He discovers he has an undetected heart problem that needs to be fixed. His parents decide that he and his dad need to join a Circle as a way to express and learn about masculinity. It’s all very confusing.

In the afterword, Salazar says she wrote this for her son, once she realized that there weren’t many books out there depicting what it’s like for boys to go through puberty, to feel their feels, to explore what it means, and how to be a man, and she wanted to write one. Which she nails. I didn’t particularly like puberty or being 13 or eighth grade, but I think Salazar gets all the big emotions and the big feelings and the confusion that goes along with that time in one’s life. She handles it all with grace and with compassion: Both Elio and Camellia make mistakes as they try to figure out what “relationships” and “liking” and just what feeling feelings mean. And it’s wonderfully age-appropriate. It’s an excellent book to hand kids in the 11- to 12-year-old range, on the cusp of all of this, to help them navigate it. I’m not sure there are many adults who would buy this for their boys, but honestly: they should. It’s an excellent book about growing up, learning to be a compassionate and kind person, and how to navigate an incredibly confusing and difficult time of life.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman

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by Gennifer Choldenko
First sentence: “My name is Hank Hooperman, but my little sister calls me Pooperman.”
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Content: There is some mild swearing and bad parenting (including drinking and driving). It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Hank has a problem: his mother left a week ago to run an errand, leaving 11-year-old Hank in charge of his three year old sister Boo. They’ve managed, so far, but they’ve run out of food and money. So, Hank decides what he needs to do is find Lou Ann, the person his mother put down as his emergency contact. Once there, though, Hank has a whole new set of problems: Lou Ann isn’t fond of “teenagers” (even though Hank is only 11), and she really isn’t fond of the way his mother just left. As Hank tries to find her, and to find footing in this life that he’s suddenly been thrust into, the only thing that grounds him is he knows that he and Boo need to stick together.

This was a gut punch of a book that went down so well. Choldenko knows how to write kids, and knows how to write difficult situations that give the A book weight without dragging it down. I liked that Hank still had good days – he made friends at his new school, found out that he liked basketball, and learned to rely a bit on the adults around him, instead of needing to do it all himself – and yet, Choldenko didn’t brush over all the trauma that Hank had to deal with. His mother being unreliable, Lou Ann being super strict and not liking Hank much at all, the fear that he and Boo would be separated. There was a lot of heartbreak here. But there was also a lot of joy, which I suppose is what life is.

I’m not sure if it’ll appeal to kids, but I really liked this one.

Drawing Deena

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by Hena Khan
First sentence: “I wince as the sharp metal tool scrapes against my molars and pricks my gums.”
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Content: There are some tense moments, and Deena experiences a panic attack. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

What Deena really wants to do is draw. She’s good at it, and she loves it. However, her parents are always super stressed about money, and they are always pushing her towards doing something that will help her earn a living. They work hard – her mother has a clothing business, that Deena is sure she could help with – but they are unwilling to spend their money on art lessons. There are other money issues, and it all weighs on Deena, until she starts having anxiety attacks.

This is a quiet little book, without high-stakes conflict, but I thought that Khan did well with the characterizations. I could feel Deena’s parents’ stress, and understood their hesitation to spend money (I’ve been there!). I could understand why Deena wanted to both pursue her art but also to make her parents happy. I got the friendship conflicts and Deena’s jealousy of her cousin. I also liked her portrayal of anxiety, especially in someone who didn’t know they had it. Nothing in the book was high-stakes, but Khan is a good writer and while the book was quiet, it was a good sort of quiet.

I really liked it.

The Thirteenth Circle

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by MarcyKate Connolly and Kathryn Holmes
First sentence: “There was an alien in Cat Mulvaney’s bedroom.”
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Content: There are some intense moments. It’s in the Middle Grade section of the bookstore.

Dani desperately wants her parents to take her interest in science seriously. Cat desperately wants her father to pay attention to her. And so both need to win the McMurray Youth Science competition and get into ScienceU. The problem: they’re working together and Cat wants to prove that aliens exist, and Dani knows that they don’t. It just so happens that every 13 years crop circles appear in a nearby field, and they’re due to appear this year. And Cat’s figured out when and where. All they have to do is gather evidence… and see whose theory is the solid one.

It’s a mild spoiler to say that this is solidly realistic fiction; there are, in fact, no aliens. But, Dani and Cat do uncover a conspiracy and they do end up realizing that working together is better than working against each other. I liked this one well enough; I liked how Dani and Cat would gather evidence and then work out hypotheses based on the evidence. It was unbelievable how much time these 13-year-olds spent running around the town late at night, but I can forgive that. And the whole conspiracy was a bit over the top, though it fit the story.

Will it be my favorite book this year? No, but it’s a good one.

Operation: Happy

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by Jenni L. Walsh
First sentence: “A dog is at the top of my wish list.”
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Content: There are some intense moments – bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor, and an attempted assault – though it is short and age-appropriate. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Jody is the daughter of a Marine, who is stationed in Pearl Harbor in 1940. If you know history, you know where this is going. The book is divided into two: before the attack, where Jody is enjoying living in Hawaii and having her family around, and then after, when she, her mom, and her sister are evacuated to San Francisco, dealing with the aftermath of the attack.

It’s a slim book to handle all that’s in there, but Walsh handles it quite beautifully. As a reader, you get a sense of the idyllic Hawaiian life before the attacks, how Jody loves spending time with her dog and her family. And then the intensity of the attacks and the spiral afterward, when Jody’s mom becomes overwhelmed and depressed and Jody and her sister have to figure out how to deal with creating a livable life for themselves in San Francisco. And I appreciate that while Walsh didn’t sugarcoat the panic or the fear, she made it age-appropriate.

The only thing I didn’t get was the purpose of the chapters written from the dog’s perspective. While it never veered into speculative, I didn’t feel like they added much to the story. But, aside from that, it’s a charming historical novel that addresses some intense subjects.

Unstuck

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by Barbara Dee
First sentence: “Okay, here we go.”
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Content: There is some friendship drama, anxiety depictions, and mild crushing. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Lyla loves to write. She’s got a whole novel inside her head, and when her ELA class comes to a creative writing unit, she’s super excited. The excitement only intensifies when her teacher mentions a short-story contest that gives actual money prizes. Lyla just knows she can win this. Except, when the time comes, Lyla is paralyzed. She can’t put anything down on paper. And it seems like external pressures – the fight she’s having with her best friend and the secrets she’s keeping for her older sister – are just making her even more anxious.

On the one hand, the fact that this was about something simple – Lyla’s inability to write the story in her head on paper – was quite refreshing. Her parents were loving, if a bit helecopter-y; she was having friend trouble, but it wasn’t all-consuming; her sister was having problems motivating herself to go to college – nothing life-shattering. It all felt very normal and authentic. That said, it was also often very anxiety-inducing. (Which is probably a sign of good writing.) I had to put it down quite a bit because I just couldn’t handle Lyla’s anxiety spirals. But, she does learn coping mechanisms, and she does learn to accept things and communicate her feelings, so in the end, I think the depictions of anxiety were a good thing. They were just hard to read.

I did really like this one, in the end. It’s good for kids who are thinking about being writers, or ones who just like good stories.

Bog Myrtle

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by Sid Sharp
First sentence: “Two sisters lived alone in a hideous, drafty old house on the edge of town.”
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Release date: October 8, 2024
Content: It’s a short book, probably about beginning chapter level, with a lot of pictures. It’ll probably end up where The Wolf Suit did, in the Middle Grade Graphic Novel section.

Sisters Magnolia and Beatrice lived in a drafty house at the edge of town and didn’t have a lot of money. Magnolia, who was grumpy and just a bit mean, was always cold, so Beatrice, who was nice and kind, decided to go buy some yarn to make her a sweater. They didn’t have money (see: cold, drafty house) so Beatrice decided to go find treasures in the forest to trade for yarn. When that doesn’t work, she meets the Bog Myrtle and the course of the sisters’ lives changes. For both good and bad.

I didn’t know I needed a charming fable about kindness and sustainability with a strong anti-capitalist sentiment, but I guess I did. I adored this one quite a bit. It’s got a quirky sense of humor, much like The Wolf Suit, and it’s both sweet and a bit edgy at the same time. I do hope that there are kids who find this one, and who love it as much as I do.

A lot of fun!

The Mystery of Locked Rooms

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by Lindsay Currie
First sentence: “‘Angle it the other way!’ West screeches, holding his mirror up in the air.”
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Content: There are some mildly intense moments. It’s in the Middle Grade (graes 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Sarah and her two best friends West and Hannah love doing escape rooms, and they’re good at them. So, when Sarah’s house gets foreclosed and she learns about the Triplet Treasure in an abandoned funhouse outside of town, Sarah decides – and of course, West and Hannah come along – that she’s going to break into the funhouse and find the treasure.

This book is fantastic! It’s tight – it takes place mostly over one day, as we follow the kids through the funhouse as they solve the riddles and face their fears to get to the end. It’s everything I like about a middle grade books – no romance, not super high stakes, and a tight story that pulls the reader through the book. I liked that the parents were good; the house was being foreclosed because Sarah’s dad has been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and couldn’t work anymore, and her mother couldn’t quite make enough money to make the mortgage payments. It’s smart, it’s fun, and I think there’s a lot of kids out there who will enjoy it. Give it to those who liked Mr. Lemoncello’s Libraray, and they’ll enjoy figuring out these as well.