From The Mixed Up Files

  Supercharge your Story How do animals supercharge their bodies? Stupendous survival strategies you call adaptations! How do you supercharge your writing? Stupendous strategies you can snag from this month’s books! High energy text can be extremely effective. Sometimes that energy just spills out as you write, but sometimes it is tougher to come by. Fortunately, a few fine-tuning exercises may be all you need to take your writing from fizzle to sizzle! Vivid Verbs Sure your characters could just eat something, but take a clue from Kate Messner and have them smash, zap, sting...

Newbery Honor-winning author Gary Paulsen died suddenly last week. The prolific Paulsen, who wrote more than 200 books for children and adults, was 82 years old. His recurring theme–survival–echoed a hard childhood marked by parental abuse, alcoholism, and abandonment. In spite of his traumatic upbringing, Paulsen was able to transform those experiences into work that encouraged and inspired young readers to find their own strength and believe in themselves. His final book, NORTHWIND (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux Books for Young Readers), will release in January 2022.  ...

September and October are big months for new releases and there are quite a few diverse debuts to celebrate. Here are seven new books with diverse characters all out in the month of September. Yusef Azeem is not a Hero by Saadia Faruqi, is the story of sixth grader Yusef...

  Supercharge your Story How do animals supercharge their bodies? Stupendous survival strategies you call adaptations! How do you supercharge your writing? Stupendous strategies you can snag from this month’s books! High energy text can be extremely effective. Sometimes that energy just spills out as you write, but sometimes it...

Welcome to my interview with middle grade author Elly Swartz and our sneak peek into her next release DEAR STUDENT – Autumn, a girl with social anxiety and a pet guinea pig named Spud, becomes the secret voice of the advice column in her middle school newspaper. THE BOOK DEAR...

By Robyn Gioia, M.Ed Constitution Day, September 17, 1787: The day the U.S. Constitution was signed by founding fathers such as George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Jay at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. What began as newspaper comic strips in the...

Leaves are changing. The temperature is dropping. Fall is definitely here, and just in time for a great month of new middle grade books. Check out our list of October New Releases – including some that will arrive just in time for Halloween reading. Nina Soni, Halloween Queen by Kashmira...

I’m always on the look out for new writing tools and techniques to try, so for this From The Mixed Up Files post, I asked some of my middle-grade author friends how they approach 5 different parts of the process to write a story: world-building, starting a story, pacing, plot...