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With her recent book for middle grade readers, Impossible Creatures, Katherine Rundell tells a tale of possibility. While the book soars on the fringes of imagination, with its talk of griffins, berserkers, unicorns, and sphinxes, it recounts the power of courage, determination, and a fierce passion for protection. It tells the story of two young people, Malum Arvorian and Christopher Forrester who have an allegiance to wild and living things. Rundell is herself a magician when it comes to creating characters and putting them into situations where their best selves emerge. For example, although Mal’s Aunt Leonor is a sullen and gruff character, she putsRead More →

Cover image for the book Please Be My Star

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Please Be My Star by Victoria Grace Elliot captures the uncertainty of first love and the awkwardness of being a teenager in a beautifully illustrated graphic novel.  Erika’s status as a new student at school is awkward enough without her awareness that she is a ‘creep.’ Erika is aware that her tendency to draw cute boys she doesn’t know and to fantasize about boys that she does makes her more than a little weird. Something that is constantly being told to her by her imaginary inner self who looks like a vampiric alter ego. This alter ego is Erika’s most opinionated critic, verbalizing all ofRead More →

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With Tryouts, Sarah Sax writes and illustrates a graphic novel for middle school readers about the power of teamwork, self-advocacy, and voice. As a young athlete, Alexandra Olsen (aka Al) has played baseball for a rec league, but the baseball team at her middle school is for boys only. With the help of her friends Milo and Viv, Al not only discovers that “gender-inclusive teams have led the way in Brinkley sports history” (58) but that Title IX says she has to be allowed an equal chance to play if there is no equivalent girls’ team. Hoping for a fair shot to play, Al triesRead More →

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Set largely in Helena, Alabama, Blood at the Root tells the story of Malik Baron who has pain, anger and magic in his DNA. At age seven on the night his magic manifests, Malik’s mama disappears. Believing his magic is responsible for this loss and that he killed his mama, Malik buries his talent because he can’t always control it and because it reminds him of pain. Inspired by Toni Morrison, Ladarrion Williams sets out to cultivate a new era of Black fantasy with this book, one that celebrates Black boys and their magic, one that shouts, “Blackness is magic!” Given his mother’s disappearance andRead More →

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Uniquely wired, Lena Lennox carries her worries around like an extra backpack. So, when the counsellor at Cranberry Bog Middle School selects seven students for a pilot program to test the concept of mindful meditation, Lena is among those invited to set aside their anxious thoughts. As the plot unfolds in Betsy Uhrig’s novel for middle grade readers, Mind Over Monsters, the seven, who “look like someone’s attempt at a diversity ad” (21), discover some up sides to the app as well as some mysteries. The first mystery surfaces when pieces of “weirdly cold” junk remain after a meditation period in the Facing One’s FearsRead More →

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With her writing and illustrating for the graphic novel The Deep Dark, Molly Knox Ostertag takes readers on a journey into the psychology of dark thoughts and their potential to suck the life from us. Trying to survive senior year, Magdalena Herrera (aka Mags) is stuck in a small Southern California town under a mountain of responsibilities that include coursework, a part-time job, caring for her mostly bed-ridden abuela, and struggling with her gender and sexual identities. When her transgender childhood friend Nessa returns from college, Mags has a kindred spirit to help support her, and together they must make the choice to thrive orRead More →

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With his writing of Breaking into Sunlight, John Cochran pens a story that gives hope and inspiration to anyone who has watched another human being struggle with drug and other addictions. Dealing with an addict is Reese Buck’s reality, and when his dad, Sam, overdoses on pain medication, Reese loses himself in drawing or basketball. These distractions enable him to push to the back of his brain the painful truth that his life is a huge mess. Instead of having to think about his dad, Reese dreams of making a name for himself in the Guinness World Records as the first thirteen-year-old to sink theRead More →

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G.F. Miller sets out to explore early relationships in her book Not If You Break Up with Me First. The novel follows two best friends: Eve McNeil and Andrew Ozdemir. The pair has “seen each other through growth spurts, family drama, and broken bones” (9). However, hormones and other life changes occur during the summer between seventh and eighth grade. When Andrew returns from a Florida trip taller, stronger, and with a deeper voice, Eve’s parents are struggling to hold their family together. At school in Andrew’s circle of friends, talk of Legos and video games has shifted to talk of which girls the boysRead More →

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Ruby Hale, who avoids confrontation and spiders, hopes to be a travel influencer. Given that interest, she films, edits, and posts content to her YouTube Show, Ruby’s Hidden Gems. Seeing the feats other cultures have achieved and the architecture that they’ve built all speak to Ruby’s soul. So, when her French class schedules a trip to France, Ruby is beyond excited. She wants to soak in as much of the world as she can in order to earn her way to exploring more of it. Once Ruby reaches Paris, her adrenaline junkie friend Valerie Moreau encounters a young man named Julien who offers a tourRead More →