From the Mixed-Up Files…

Not only is October LGBTQ+ History Month, but October 11 is National Coming Out Day. To mark these two events today, we’re featuring Sarah Prager, author of the award-winning Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World (2017), illustrated by Zoe More O’Ferrall, as well as her forthcoming book, Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History (2020, illustrated by Sarah Papworth). Sarah has also developed the Quist mobile app (quistapp.com), a free resource that teaches LGBTQ+ history in youth-friendly ways.   Let’s welcome Sarah to the Mixed-Up Files blog today to discuss...

Congratulations to us!! Thanks to our loyal and fabulous readers, From the Mixed-Up Files … of Middle-Grade Authors has been voted one of the Top 100 Children’s Book Blogs on the web. We’re so excited and proud to be here … but of course, it takes a village. Our amazing team of contributors, our steadfast readers, and of course the middle-grade community and all of us who love, read, write, teach, publish, and circulate middle-grade books are the engine that makes it all run. We’re so excited to see what this new year brings....

One of my graduate students once told me that as she was reading a craft book on writing, she suddenly felt that everything she read about was a technique that she had failed to apply to her work-in-progress. I laughed with recognition. It’s like a medical student who thinks she...

One of my graduate students once told me that as she was reading a craft book on writing, she suddenly felt that everything she read about was a technique that she had failed to apply to her work-in-progress. I laughed with recognition. It’s like a medical student who thinks she...

Not only is October LGBTQ+ History Month, but October 11 is National Coming Out Day. To mark these two events today, we’re featuring Sarah Prager, author of the award-winning Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World (2017), illustrated by Zoe More O’Ferrall, as well as her forthcoming...

If you’ve read Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, or Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, or Laura Shovan’s The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, or Margarita Engle’s The Surrender Tree — or any other beautifully crafted novel in verse — you know how powerful this form of the written word can be. Here, five authors of middle-grade...

Our new releases for this month features the latest from The Mixed Up Files contributor Jennifer Swanson, a biography of a president, a sequel, several middle-grade debuts, a Junior Library Guild selection and starred reviews for a number of these great new books for young readers. Buy or pre-order now...

We’ve got a surprise for you, today – an exclusive COVER REVEAL! Are you ready to see the amazing cover? The one that shares Kate Klise & M. Sarah Klise’s upcoming release . . . DON’T CHECK OUT THIS BOOK? It’s so MG and absolutely perfect for the story! And the...