And then he starts dancing. All rhythmic stamping and flying fingers and bony elbows and knobby knees. Bizet would have been amazed. Somewhere around third grade, the notion that the lives that they know will one day fall away — that their child selves will cease to be and their adult selves will take their places — really starts to hit home. Ask any third grader what he or she wants to be when they grow up, and they will tell you approximately nine thousand things. Sometimes, all at once. This is a thing I know for sure. The adult that kid imagines him or herself to be. Across time, across space, across experience and understanding, across universes, across dimensions, across everything boundless and wondrous and strange.
Which means that these books, when done well, allow for that sense of concurrency. They allow our selves as kids and our selves as adults to reflect back at one another. Both narrative lines, both sets of understandings, harmonize with one another. And it is a wonderful thing.
They love each other, these girls. They are linked souls. I love the kids of this age. I love everything about them. I love their humor and their silliness. I love their capacity for wonder. I love their bravery and their fears and their litany of worries.
- Skeleton for Dinner?
- Twelve Weeks: An Artists Story of Cancer, Healing, and Hope;
- Epcot Tour for those with Disabilities: A Self-guided Pictorial Tour (Visual Travel Tours Book 159).
I love their valor. I love the boundlessness of their imaginations. I love their willingness to try. I love their willingness to connect. I love them in their big-heartedness and their shriveled soulishness and that both of those things can happen simultaneously. I love their dreams. I love their nightmares. I read Middle Grade novels. I write Middle Grade novels.
I love Middle Grade novels. I spend a lot of time thinking about Middle Grade novels. I will never tell you which one was the very best of all. It is a ludicrous idea. I can tell you which books moved me. I could give you a list that is miles long. I could invite you to my house and hand you book after book, and talk each one up for hours. And in our hearts.
And in our lives. It is negative five degrees. Not including the wind chill factor. They are standing on a frozen hillside. Their faces are red. Their upper lips are white with frozen snot. They are balanced on their snow boards, ready to go screaming into the sky.
Your superpower shows itself to you. These books lay out a blanket in the market square. This is a story for all of you. People of middle age!
Come and share and connect and laugh and weep and worry and wonder and live. When I talk to middle grade kids about the books that we have both read, we will talk about characters, and we will talk about amazing feats, and we will talk about jokes and ideas and scary parts and mind-blowing parts, but what we are actually saying is this: I feel with you. We have hearts and souls. We have compassion and grace. We are so alive. For those of you who have followed me on Facebook and Twitter, back when I used to be on Facebook and Twitter I am still on the latter, officially, though the only tweets currently are the automatically generated blog post alerts from WordPress.
My computer prevents me from accessing the site until September. Which is to say, my thirteen year old daughter is bossy, because she was the one who set it up. This was through no fault of my beloved editrix Elise Howard , who is brilliant and amazing and right about everything. This has everything to do with me. Revising a novel is building a granite castle.
And then taking it apart and building it again. While carrying a very heavy and very ill-tempered goose. Revising a novel is the thick, muddy traverse through a swamp, only to realize that you have to climb a cliff on the other side. And you forgot your rope. Revising a novel requires the skin of a rhinoceros and the strength of a bull and the delicacy of a jeweler.
Revising a novel feels like performing open-heart surgery. Revising a novel requires you to heft a thousand-pound boulder, sling it onto your back, carry it up a mountain, and balance it on the head of a pin. This book is incredibly close to my heart, and was often emotionally exhausting to write. This story began, very long ago, as a story that my son and I told one another during a particularly grueling hike through Shenandoah National Park when he was only six. There is a lot of Leo in Ned. There is a lot of me in Aine. And the Bandit King. Because we want to get it right.
And we want to make people happy with us. And we want to not suck. This is the way of things. So I worked my bum off, took three months to write two crucial chapters that were going to re-imagine and re-focus the larger arc of the novel, allowing the choices and action to flow from a single nexus point where my main characters converge, bear witness, keep silent, and irrevocably change their trajectories. Anyway, apparently, in the last revision, I managed to grow the novel by ten thousand words. And that was after some major textual excising. Which explains a thing or two. And now I am, once more, into the brink.
I have a map. I have my dear editor sounding her trumpet and spurring me onward. I have a lantern. I have a sword. I have a pure heart and a just cause and a mind on fire. I have characters to rescue. I have giants made of stone. I have a stalwart wolf and a ferocious girl and a boy who does not know what he is capable of.
I have my heart and my brain and my love, and I hope it will be enough. Only one victim for that blasted river. He did not help the father, nor did he touch the boy. Everyone in the village knew that those marked for drowning were cursed by nature. The river was a greedy thing. It would have that boy eventually. This was common knowledge. This was not magic. This was a simple practicality. Witching, after all, is tricky work. She had learned, after all these years, to see the world from the inside — its foundation and its beams, its braces, insulation and gaps.
She knew the weak places. She knew how lean against the fabric of the world and nudge it this way or that. She knew how to make suggestions. Anyone could do it, if they ever learned. Her real magic was dangerous — capable of great good and great evil in equal measure. It was work keeping it good. It required a firm hand and an iron will.
Best to use it sparingly, if at all. The ladies from the village came in droves. They descended onto the grieving house like an army of magpies, all feather and gossip and claw. She thanked her visitors for their meat pies and fruit pies and custard pies and pies she could not identify or name.
She thanked them for their pots of stew and their legs of lamb and their heavy rounds of hard cheese. Their gifts were thoughtful, tender, and full of wiles. Sister Witch had no intention of answering a thing. Her son, Tam, was dead. Her magic could not save him. And that was that. And because I hate being alone and wallowing in psychic pain, I turn it over to you. Any extraneous scenes that simply detracted from the central pulse of your novel — that single, beating heart?
Paste it here and share! Our amputated novel bits can assemble and congregate. They can bind together into hideous and beloved homunculi. By the way, time is running out to sign up for my class at the Loft — starting on March In essence, as writers for this audience, our stories success hinges on how well we can hook the habitual readers — the kids who always have a book in their back pockets, or under their beds, or tucked under the crook of their arms. I work my students pretty hard. I read their first fifty pages of their WIPs pretty carefully, and give them intensive exercises during class and homework and reading and whatever.
And, you know what? This week, a box of books arrived in the Barnhill house. I opened them up, and peered inside, and saw multiple copies of my book looking back at me, blinking their sleepy eyes. I have been a basket case ever since. The time when I erased the ending over and over and over again, trying to get the thing to land right.
The time when I poured over galley pages from sunup to sundown until my eyes were bloodshot and dry and my skin flaked away like dust and my soul became clouds and clouds and clouds. And I was a basket case when the first ARCs arrived in the mail. And when the art was finalized. And when they sent me the map. And when I knew that the first reviewers were holding my book, or pouring over my book, or ignoring it all together. And then I ran away. Amazon has them at the ready. Any beloved indie bookstore can snag a copy — or ten — in a matter of days.
I was hanging out with a bunch of other moms from the neighborhood last night. There was wine and cookies and book talks and a bunch of ladies dishing about god-knows-what, and I brought a copy of the book to show them. These are women whose kids play with my kids, who show up at neighborhood functions with caprese salads and noodle bakes and bars.
These are good, good women.
50 Must-Read Middle Grade Graphic Novels
Anyway, they asked me if I was excited. I feel vulnerable and hopeful and frightened and exposed. They were amazed at this and somewhat flabbergasted, so I clarified. Violet — the girl that I struggled with and fussed over; the girl who inspired fits of tenderness and exasperation; the girl who haunted my dreams for months and months? And I never get to have her back.
Navigating Middle Grade Books
And that, my friends, is a mournful thing. Still, it means that she belongs to more people than just me. She belongs to the reader. She belongs to the library. She belongs to the classroom and the after school center and the back seat of the station wagon on a road trip to Lubbock. She belongs to you. And the kid next door. Godspeed Dragon and even the Nybbas.
Godspeed to you all. The Danes, as a group, pretty much ruled in the nicknaming department. Particularly with their various monarchs. Thyra, Queen of Denmark, was a lady of questionable parentage — with more folks listed as possible fathers and mothers than a new-born kit in a bunny factory.
Which is to say that her parents, while terribly important, were likely not married. And that, of course, makes a good story — the clever girl marries the schumpy boy and makes a great man out of him. And it may be true. However there is another record from the historian Saxo Grammaticus tells us another story, thusly: She surpassed other women in seriousness and shrewdness, and laid the condition on her suitor that she would not marry him till she had received Denmark as a dowry.
This compact was made between them, and she was betrothed to Gorm. What I do know is this: Stories like that make me question my whole life. This woman was brilliant. Thyra was already well-known by the time she married poor old Gorm. Or, at least it is said that she was. Thyra has many stories. Perhaps they are all true.
Author, teacher, mom. Newbery medalist. Terrible gardener. Maker of pie.
The stories say that she was pretty, brave and resilient. They say that she fought an army of Germans and held them at bay. They say that she travelled across the Sea of Trolls to retrieve a stolen daughter. And you know what? After all, they called her husband Gorm The Old. Know what they called her? The Pride of Denmark.
Or the Ornament of Denmark.
- Joe Pusher Picture Book Volume 16 Featuring Calista (Joe Pusher Picture Book Collection)?
- Middle grade fiction!
- The Normal Kid by Elizabeth Holmes!
- Islam in India: Stories of Conflict and Assimilation.
Or the Jewel on the Neck of Denmark. According to legend, she was wooed aggressively by Otto, the emperor of Germany. And she held him off with batted lashes and sly smiles, all the while building a massive dyke that still stands today from which to wage war. And friends, war was waged and Otto ran off with his tail between his legs. Later, when Gorm persuaded her to become his wife, she laid down her final terms for the nuptials to take place: It will take the encouragement of a new friend, the non-magical and non-conforming Charlie, to convince Aster to try practicing his skills.
And it will require even more courage to save his family…and be truly himself. But can he resist the call of the wild to answer the call of duty? But her village is so safe and quiet! With her best friend Marie an aspiring princess , and her brother Gaston a pastry-chef-to-be , Claudette embarks on a super-secret quest to find a giant—without parental permission. Can they find and defeat the giant before their parents find them and drag them back home?
And when more monsters start mysteriously manifesting than ever before, Scarlett knows she has to get to the bottom of it and save the city…whatever the danger! Down each of these paths there are puzzles, mysterious clues, and shocking revelations. She has no choice…one day she skipped a rock across a pond, and hit a unicorn in the face. Improbably, this resulted in a lasting friendship between Phoebe and the unicorn, one Marigold Heavenly Nostrils.
Come along for the unicorn ride with Phoebe, as she deals with the usual burdens of childhood cruel classmates, gym class, piano lessons and also some unusual ones magic hair, candy-breathing dragons, and the legendary Shield of Boringness. But things start looking up when Portia mounts a late-night excursion into the woods behind her house and discovers a shy, sweet-natured purple monster. Luckily, he has a little knowledge, a new friend, and the surprisingly approachable city itself to guide his way.
Kristy is having a hard time accepting her stepdad-to-be, and the newest member of the gang, Stacey, seems to be hiding a secret. Smile by Raina Telgemeier. But one night after Girl Scouts she trips and falls, severely injuring her two front teeth. What follows is a long and frustrating journey with on-again, off-again braces, surgery, embarrassing headgear, and even a retainer with fake teeth attached. They are sisters, after all. Not to mention the onstage AND offstage drama that occurs once the actors are chosen.
And when two cute brothers enter the picture, things get even crazier! As the girls explore their new home, a neighbor lets them in on a secret: Maya is determined to meet one, but Cat wants nothing to do with them. With few resources and a mysterious entity on the hunt, each secret unlocked could save them…or spell their doom. One thing Reese knows for sure: This is one Bad Island. These are just a few of the questions Princess Maxine Titan must ask herself on her tenth birthday.
See, turning ten is the very important day when every princess meets her very own fairy godmother and receives a special gift. As the seasons pass, Dog tries to replace his friend, making and losing a series of new ones, from a melting snowman to epicurean anteaters. Meanwhile, Robot passes his time daydreaming, escaping to better places…Through interwoven journeys, the two characters long to recover from their day at the beach. Prince Sebastian is looking for a bride—or rather, his parents are looking for one for him.
Sebastian is too busy hiding his secret life from everyone. At night he puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia—the hottest fashion icon in the world capital of fashion! How long can Frances defer her dreams to protect a friend? When the eggs hatch with no mother dragon in sight, Alanna decides to take care of the babies herself, even creating a clever costume so that the babies think she, too, is a dragon.
With their large appetites and accidental fire burps, Alanna learns that dragon babies are hard work! Or why going to school in only your underwear is a BAD idea! Find out in HILO-a laugh-out-loud, epic story of friendship! And the occasionally mutant robot ant. Join Adrienne, her guardian dragon, Sparky, and their plucky friend Bedelia as they begin their own quest in this one of a kind, action packed, all-ages adventure!
Castle in the Stars: Sign up to The Kids Are All Right to receive news and recommendations from the world of kit lit and middle grade books. A memorable voice was mentioned several times by editors and agents as one of the most sought-after attributes of a strong middle grade project. Having a lot of fun. I love middle grade stories that open the world for readers. There are spaces and narratives from which storytellers have traditionally been excluded, and we want our authors to be free to tell those stories too. Rosenthal offers a broad mental wish list he refers to when on the hunt for a new acquisition.
There are so many earnest, laudable books out there. So many people want them. I am just not one of them. As long as the character and voice grab me, the genre can range widely. I have never seen middle grade flourish as much as it is right now. Laurie at Books Inc. They are the demographic that is most invested in trends, peer referral, and the independence that comes with reading things that their parents are not familiar with.
Character Worksheets
Compton notes a growing sophistication in the middle grade category as well. We need stories that include all kinds of diversity—families with gay parents or single parents, different races and ethnic backgrounds, neurodiversity, and the differently abled. What I want for the middle grade books I represent is to leave readers a little kinder and more understanding toward anyone who may seem different. McAden has noticed a tendency toward darker, more complex subject matter in middle grade works. There is still a long way to go, but it is amazing and encouraging to see how quickly priorities are shifting and how open and eager we are.
For more of the latest developments in the middle grade category, see our Spotlight on Middle Grade. To subscribe, click here. Simply close and relaunch your preferred browser to log-in. If you have questions or need assistance setting up your account please email pw pubservice. New York Rights Fair. Navigating Middle Grade Books Publishers share the latest developments in this ever-shifting and expanding category By Shannon Maughan.