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Seventeen-year-old Sal Amani lives in a haunted house, and everyone at Holden High knows it. However, Sal is keeping secrets, and his sister Asha—who is a talented writer with dreams of attending university and becoming a journalist—has put her life on hold while their mother deals with the loss of her husband. When the house keeps Sal awake, he runs. Sal’s good friend Dirk Madden tries to help, but he’s worried about social capital. Then, there’s Elsie, who has wrongly been labelled a slut.  When Pax Delaney moves to town, he claims he’s good with ghosts. Although weird and unbalanced is Pax’s normal, Sal isRead More →

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With a name like Grimsbane, a person is bound to find connections to death, destruction, woe, and gloom. And readers will find all that in Joan Reardon’s The Grimsbane Family Witch Hunters. Set in Witchless, Indiana, this novel for middle grade readers features Anna and Billy Grimsbane, twin siblings who are about to turn thirteen. Billy is a “nerd extraordinaire” and a lover of scones. He is also organized, intelligent, and fearless. Anna, on the other hand, is more impulsive. She is also naturally agile, protective, and loyal. Both are eager to enter the family business, although for very different reasons. A family of witchRead 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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Because Where Was Goodbye? is a story about navigating grief, loss, and the search for answers about suicide, Janice Lynn Mather provides a trigger warning at the beginning of her novel. Although suicide is central to Mather’s writing, Where Was Goodbye? also indicates the importance of support systems, coping mechanisms, friendship, and unconditional love. Having an eye for color and creation, Karmen Wallace is a maker of soft things. Despite her ability to knit, her family is broken, and Karmen is struggling to make sense of the tragic loss of her brother Julian who takes his life by suicide. Although Karmen’s best friend, Layla, isRead More →

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Guilt is the glue that keeps Rana’s immigrant family together. In the Muslim world that Rana is from, the goal is to become a dutiful wife. However, that is a version of womanhood that Rana can’t live up to. She’s gay but keeps her sexual identity secret. Because she’s suffering from the loss of one of her best friends, Louie who died a mysterious death, Rana quits basketball and carbo loads her pain. As she shrinks into herself, her teacher Ms. Murillo tries to draw her out, telling her that her opinion matters and offering her meditation as a way to open up to possibility:Read More →

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In writing Hamra and the Jungle of Memories, Hanna Alkaf begins in the fashion of a traditional fairy tale. In her reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood, Alkaf borrows heavily from the Malaysian Muslim culture and weaves her magical retelling with Malay customs and cuisine. The star of this tale is thirteen-year-old Hamra, who is stubborn, sad, rebellious, and angry. She is tired of wiping up messes and cooking and listening to her grandmother say things that don’t’ make sense now that she is living with dementia. Hamra is tired of always having to be nice and good and polite and responsible. And she isRead More →

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Prickly, unhappy, and bruised by the tragic deaths of her parents, Maria Latif is bustled off from Pakistan to Long Island, New York. After being bounced from relative to unfortunate relative, she is now going to stay with family friends. Still, the orphaned Maria knows this is just another temporary landing place. When she arrives, Maria is prepared to hate New York, but there is a secret about the Clayborne House on Long Island that she doesn’t understand. Something about the way an unloved, untouched, and unclaimed garden hums and thrums makes Maria think that this bit of earth can be hers. With a gardenRead More →

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Told in five parts and written from the perspective of a Mars’ Rover intermixed with letters from Sophie, A Rover’s Story by Jasmine Warga targets middle grade readers who are fascinated by space, earth science, and computer coding. Inspired by NASA’s real Mars’ Rover, Warga creates Resilience. Under the influence of Warga’s pen and through anthropomorphism, Resilience learns important lessons about what it might mean to be human. Res develops relationships with two NASA scientists, Rania and Xander who work in California’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and with a community of machines, namely Journey, Fly, and Guardian. Built for observation, Resilience awakens to knowledge. Although notRead More →

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Nina Stott is a daring spirit, a warrior unshy about being herself. She is someone who acts “like a prism, each person’s light reflecting through her, showing every single thing that [makes someone else] special” (259). However, she is tragically killed in a drunk driving accident. Without her sister Nina, Eleonora (Leo) doesn’t know what happy is supposed to feel like. Robin Benway’s novel A Year to the Day tells the story of Leo’s journey as she navigates the waters of grief and tries to regain her memory of that fateful night. Nina’s absence takes up space in Leo’s heart, reminding her of what hasRead More →