Middle Grade

Audiobook: Barely Floating

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by Lilliam Rivera
Read by Victoria Villarreal
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Release date: August 29, 2023
Content: There are a couple of mild swear words. It will be in the Middle-Grade section of the bookstore.

Nat has been out-swimming kids at her neighborhood pool for ages. She uses the money to go with her friend to the Anime Con. But one day, she catches a performance of the synchronized swimming team the L.A. Mermaids and she’s hooked. The problem? Her activist parents think synchronized swimming is too white and too focused on appearance for Nat to participate in. The solution? Lie to her parents, get her older cousin involved, and use her money to join the team anyway.

This is going to end badly. (Mild spoiler, there, but you see it coming).

On the one hand: this was so full of representation! There’s a not-skinny Latinx girl at the center of it, someone who is strong and fierce and not the person you think of when you think of synchronized swimming. There’s a boy on the team! It’s made up of not-super-rich kids! And, yet I was super anxious the whole way through because Nat was making some Choices. I get the choices – she felt like she couldn’t do anything else because her parents, who said they were open-minded, didn’t want to listen to her. But ALSO, from a parent’s perspective: AAAAAAHHHHH really!? How did she not get caught sooner?? How clueless are you?! So, mixed feelings to say the least. I did love Villarreal’s narration, though. She was a delight to listen to and brought all the characters to life. Will kids like this? Maybe? I love that the main character is a non-white girl who doesn’t fit the usual swimming stereotype. And maybe kids will like all the subterfuge she goes through to get what she wants.

I hope it finds its audience if only so we get more books like this.

Simon Sort of Says

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by Erin Bow
First sentence: “People are always asking why my family came to the National Quiet Zone.”
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Content: There is mention of school shootings, trauma, and anxiety. It’s in the Middle-Grades section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore.

Simon O’Keeffe – the son of a Catholic deacon and an undertaker – has told a lot of stories about why his family moved to the National Quiet Zone, but none of them the real one: he’s the only survivor of a school shooting in Omaha, and his family needed to get away from everything. This is possible in a town where most electronics have been banned so that scientists can hear possible messages from space. This is only important because one of Simon’s new friends – Agate – wants to fake a message from aliens, so that the mom of another friend – Kevin – will feel a sense of accomplishment. That’s the idea, anyway. What this book is really about is the process of healing from trauma and coming to accept what has happened.

Oh this book was a delight. Funny – it genuinely made me laugh in spots – irreverant (Jesus Squirrel!), but heartfelt and hopeful. Yes, Bow deals with difficult subjects, but she does so in a way that is age-appropriate. I’m not entirely sure that Kevin’s helicopter scientist white mom and laid-back Filipino dad weren’t stereotypes, which is a downside. And the book was very white – it is a small town in Nebraska, but still. Otherwise, though, it’s a delight of a book to read.

Race for the Ruby Turtle

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by Stephen Bramucci
First sentence: “If there was one thing Jake Rizzi didn’t want to do on the last Saturday morning of the summer, it was pack a bag for the rainiest town in the whole state of Oregon.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the author.
Release date: October 3, 2023
Content: There are some intense moments because adults are being terrible. It will be in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Jake has recently been diagnosed with ADHD, and after an incident at the craft fair (let’s just say there was damage done), he’s being carted off to his Great-Aunt Hettle’s place. Once he gets there, he discovers a mystery involving a possibly mythic Ruby red-backed turtle, which coincides with a local festival. Hettle’s being cagey about everything, but Jake suspects there’s more to this story. So, can he and his new friend Mia figure it out before the adults do?

This was a lot of fun! Bramucci mixed a kid learning to deal with ADHD (but less of the “he’s a problem, let’s fix it” angle!) and a good mystery/environmental story. I liked that Jake was an animal lover and that his great-aunt Hettle got out of the way and let Jake be Jake. Sure, he makes mistakes – and has an epic fight with his new friend Mia – but he learns and grows, and yes, the two kids were able to outsmart the grown-ups.

It’s a fun book, one that embraces the importance of being kind and protecting the environment. You can’t ask for anything better than that.

Buzzing

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by Samuel Sattin, illustrated by Rye Hickman
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Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There is mention of cartoon violence. It’s in the Middle-Grade Graphic Novel section of the bookstore.

Isaac has just been diagnosed with OCD, which is manifest in the graphic novel as hovering, ever-present bees. His mother is pretty protective of him, and the way he’s coping with his new diagnosis, so when he asks to join a group of friends to play a Swamps & Sorcery game. Everything is fine until he fails a history test (and thereby the class) and his mother bans him from seeing his friends or playing the game. There is some growth – his older sister feels left out because Isaac gets a lot of attention due to his OCD and she learns to accept it. Additionally, his mother learns to be more trusting of Isaac. And he learns how to better manage the buzzing in his life.

I liked this one well enough. I think the best part of the book was the depiction of the OCD as the bees. I liked how they were always around, and Isaac had to learn to live with – and ignore – them. I liked the story and the interspersing of the Swamps & Sorcery game. The art was nice; there was some diversity – Isaac is Latinx, maybe? – and one of the characters was gender fluid. It’s not going to be my favorite this year, but it was a solid book.

The First Magnificent Summer

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by R. L. Toalson
First sentence: “Period (noun): a length or segment of time.”
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Review copy pilfered from the ARC shelves at work.
Content: There is mention of swearing, and maybe a couple of mild ones. There is talk of a girl getting her period, and of their father having an affair. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, but this one really skews to the older end.

Victoria – please don’t call me Tori anymore – and her two siblings are off to Ohio to see their father, whom they haven’t seen since he left their mom two years ago, for a whole month. Victoria is – rightly – worried about it: her dad has a new family, a new wife, and two new children, whom she calls The Replacements. She hopes it will go well, but is anxious she won’t.

And – no surprise – it doesn’t. Her dad is emotionally abusive to her, calling her fat and making her do chores that her older brother gets out of simply by being male. In fact, when she vents into a journal about her experiences – camping in a tent while The Replacements sleep in a trailer, getting her period and her father forcing her to swim anyway, her stepmother complaining that Victoria doesn’t dry the dishes correctly, or even the fact that her dad won’t use the name she prefers – her father reads her journal without her permission then proceeds to yell and slap her for it. Victoria is supremely happy to go home.

The cover and title suggest something happy, something about discovery (well, Victoria discovers she doesn’t need her father), but this was a dark, terrible book. Victoria’s dad was – to put it mildly – a piece of work. I didn’t quite get why the book needed to be set in the 90s (there was a mention of the Waco Branch Davidians raid happening a couple months before, which is a really odd way of setting a book in a time. Are kids going to know that reference?), except to maybe make it so Victoria couldn’t call home? (Or to give her dad something else to yell at her about.) It was very much about shattered dreams and shattered illusions and picking oneself up after that. Which, sure, I appreciate that.

But honestly? I really disliked this one.

Dad’s Girlfriend and Other Anxieties

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by Kellye Crocker
First sentence: “Ana should have been happy.”
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Content: There is a lot of lying, talk of pregnancy, and some parental neglect. It’s in the Middle Grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore.

Ana’s whole life it has just been her and her dad. Her mom passed soon after Ana was born, and she hasn’t known anything else. But the summer after sixth grade, her dad decides to take her out to Colorado to meet his new girlfriend and her daughter. For two whole weeks. This wouldn’t be so bad, but Ana just got diagnosed with anxiety disorder, and the idea of traveling to Colorado from nice, safe Iowa is positively anxiety-inducing. And so, when they get there, all she wants to do is go home. So she decides to sabotage the vacation. In one horrible situation after another, Ana tries to make everything come undone… and learns a lot in the process.

This was a good portrait of a 12-year-old, who was used to being the center of her father’s life, learning to share him with another adult. And remember to manage her anxiety, and how to be open to new situations. It’s kind of fun, sweet, and perfect for those middle-grade readers who want to experience a Colorado vacation (while simultaneously getting second-hand embarrassment).

A fun read.

102 Days of Lying About Lauren

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by Maura Jortner
First sentence: “Every morning, the skeleton-rooster lets out a cock-a-doodle-do that could shake a person to their very core.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s abandonment and some parental emotional abuse. It’s in the middle grade (grades 3-5) section of the bookstore, but I’d be wary about handing it to the younger end of that age group.

For 102 days, Mouse has been living in the attic of the Haunted House ride at the theme park. For 102 days she has been pretending with her “borrowed” shirt to be an employee, sweeping up guests’ messes. For 102 days she has been left alone after her mother left her in the park. She doesn’t know if her mother is going to come back, but just in case, she doesn’t want to leave. For 102 days, Mouse has been just fine. But then a strange girl comes to the park and starts asking questions about Lauren, which Mouse doesn’t want to think about. And hasn’t – not really – for 102 days.

Oh, this one is heartbreaking. Abandonment – Mouse’s mother just hit the end of her rope, but you don’t leave your kid at an amusement park! And parental abuse – Mouse’s friend Tanner is the son of the park boss, and he’s a piece of work. It takes a tornado and his son almost dying to bring him around (sorry, that’s a bit of a spoiler). And yet, there’s a bit of Boxcar Children in this one: a 12-year-old girl figuring out how to “survive” on her own, making things work for her. It’s sad, but it’s also engaging, especially since the book takes place over one day, that 102nd day when Mouse’s life changes again.

I’m not sure it’s for really young kids, but it’s a good book for someone who wants a bit of adventure and doesn’t mind the abandonment part.

Dear Mothman

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by Robin Gow
First sentence: “Dear Mothman, I pretended to believe in you for Lewis.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: The font, which looks like handwriting, is sometimes hard to read (but I’m old), and it talks about the death of a friend. It’s in the Middle-Grade section of the bookstore.

Noah’s best friend, Lewis, has died in a car accident, and Noah is not taking it well. They were inseparable, and it seems like the adults in Noah’s life don’t quite know how to handle his grief. So, Noah decides to take on Lewis’s idea for the sixth-grade science fair: proving Mothman exists. So, he starts writing letters in a journal and leaving them for Mothman to find. While proving this, Noah not only makes new friends (and finds a girlfriend), he gets brave enough to tell his parents and teacher that his pronouns and name are not what he was born with. It’s a journey in every sense of the word.

I’ve heard excellent things about this one since it came out and I thought I’d give it a try. It’s a lovely novel in verse, and I think it deals with grief really well. This means, though, that’s is quite a sad book. Noah’s dealing with a lot, and while the adults are trying, they’re not always succeeding. I’m not sure how I felt about it falling over into the magical realm, but as a book about a kid dealing with his own identity as well as the loss of his anchor, it was an excellent story.

My Not-So-Great French Escape

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by Cliff Burke
First sentence: “‘Smile!’ my mom urged.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There are some moments of bullying and a neglectful father. It’s in the Middle-Grade section of the bookstore.

Ryan has been drifting apart from his best friend, Wilder, for a while. At first, it was because they went to different schools, but when Wilder’s mom got Ryan a scholarship to the elite private school Wilder went to, Ryan thought they would be friends again. But, it wasn’t to be: Ryan found himself, and the fact that he and his mom don’t have a lot of money, the butt of jokes. This summer, Wilder is off to a month-long farming camp in France, and his mom has made it so Ryan can come along. Ryan hopes that this will rekindle their friendship.

Spoiler: Ryan is wrong. When he gets to the farm, Wilder ditches him for some French kids and Ryan is stuck with some other international kids. He’s upset and sad and misses home at first, but with the encouragement of the director, he throws himself into gardening and milking goats, and making new friends. It turns out to be a good summer after all.

This was super fun, because who wouldn’t want to spend a month in France in the summer? Burke does a good job of giving us a feel for a French farm, and Ryan is sympathetic as he learns to make new friends. Wilder never is redeemed – he’s a twat right up to the end – but the book has a good message about letting go of old friends and finding new ones. Plus goats and bees.

I really liked it, in the end.

Harriet Spies

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by Elana K. Arnold
First sentence: “If you’re not a people person, you probably wouldn’t like living at a bed-and-breakfast.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s a main character who struggles with lying a lot. It’s in the Middle-Grade section (grades 3-5) of the bookstore, but it could also end up in the Beginning Chapter Book section (grades 1-2) of the bookstore as well.

Harriet has gone to live with her grandmother at the bed-and-breakfast she owns for the summer. She’s there not because she wants to be, but because her mother is pregnant and on bed rest, and her father travels too much for work. Harriet’s not entirely happy to be at the Bric-a-Brac B&B, but she’s determined to make the best of it. That is, until the Captain’s binoculars go missing, and no one believes Harriet that she didn’t take them. (Harriet has a bad habit of lying about things. You can see why the adults don’t quite believe her.) So she determines that she needs to find the binoculars to prove to everyone that she didn’t take them! She ropes in her new friend. Clarence, and they set about trying to figure everything out. 

On the one hand, this one is cute and sweet and really hits that 6- to 8-year-old sweet spot. It’s a simple story, but the reader is kept interested in it going through. There are a lot of fun places to see on Marble Island, and Harriet even gets to set up a clubhouse for herself in an old shed and discovers her father’s old dollhouse in that he built furniture. On the other hand, was there a reason for Clarence to be Black? He kind of falls into the magical friend trope – Harriet is a terrible friend to him and just uses him to help figure out the binocular mystery. He, in turn, helps her be a better friend. While I get that he’s Black for diversity’s sake, there’s really nothing indicative of his Blackness. 

Otherwise, though, it’s a fun little book.