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In her novel Kareem Between, Shifa Saltagi Safadi shares a story about the experiences of seventh grader Kareem, who loves football and dreams of being the first Syrian American NFL player. Seeing his name on an American jersey would spell perfection for him, but first he has to earn a position on the middle school team. Set in Indiana from 2016-2017, Kareem feels invisible since he doesn’t make the football roster and his best friend Adam has moved away. To find comfort, Kareem escapes to the library where the smell of paper and ink and books surrounds him. A lover of words, Kareem uses NFLRead 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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Set in New Mexico, The Storyteller by Brandon Hobson features Ziggy Echota whose mother is a missing indigenous woman. Both of Cherokee descent, sixth grade Ziggy and his older sister Moon long to know what happened to their mother, so they begin a search in the desert with “Weird Alice” as their guide. On their journey, the two learn especially valuable lessons while the reader gains details of the Cherokee culture and its lore. As he searches, Ziggy encounters several Nunnehi, who are protectors and shape shifters. Among them are a fiddle-playing buzzard named Gus, a horse named Lampwick, and an armadillo named Andrew Jackson.Read More →

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With his novel—You Only Live Once, David Bravo—Mark Oshiro writes a time-bending adventure story for middle grade readers. The two protagonists, David Bravo and Antoine Harris have been friends forever, but now that they are entering Mira Monte Middle School in California, their lives are about to change drastically. When his teacher Mr. Bradshaw invites the class to give a short, introduce-yourself presentation about their cultures and backgrounds, David is faced with indecision. What does he include or leave out? Adopted as an infant, David’s knowledge of his origin story is limited. As he overthinks the task, David faces an identity crisis: Who is he?Read More →

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Being smart or being different often makes a young person a target for bullies.  From age four on, David Scungili and Michael Littlefield have been unfairly labelled as Stoopid and Pottymouth, nicknames that brand them for a life of cruelty, blame, and untruths.  Although these details outline the plot of James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein’s recent middle school novel, Pottymouth and Stoopid, the authors also delve into the insidious effects of bullying and the survival tactics used by the bullied.  With every chapter creatively illustrated with cartoon-style drawings by Stephen Gilpin, this book performs some myth-busting about the stereotypical bully and gives hope to theRead More →

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The Pages Between Us: In The Spotlight is the second novel by writing team Lindsay Leavitt and Robin Mellom about two best friends maneuvering through middle school. Piper and Olivia have been Best Friends for forever, but after getting different schedules at the start of middle school, they decided to start a shared journal to stay close. Now, a semester into school, they’ve got this letter-sharing journal down. The plan is to “drop off the notebook in our lockers and exchange it in the hallway between classes. Let’s document every step of the way for fun…These are our secrets. Our precious thoughts. Our ‘only myRead More →

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“A long time ago in  galaxy far, far away… there was a boy named Roman Novachez … who was destined to attend Pilot Academy Middle School and become the GREATEST Star pilot in the GALAXY. Until everything went TOTALLY and COMPLETELY WRONG…” (1)  And so begins a funny trip across the galaxy from Tatooine to Corsucant with a kid who feels  unprepared for the adventure that is middle school. Roman has been looking forward to following in his big brother’s footsteps and attending the galaxy’s renowned Pilot Academy Middle School where he can train to be a star fighter pilot.  But instead of being acceptedRead More →