Posts Tagged middle grade booklists

Don’t Pigeon-Hole Middle Grade Readers

By on January 24, 2025   /   For Teachers  
Book stack including Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame by Supriya Kelkar, Star-Crossed by Barbara Dee, Ahimsa by Supriya Kelkar, Witchlings book 1 by Clairbel Ortega, and Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

Middle grade readers span a wide range of ages and grade levels. The interests, obsessions, and reading level of your average 8-year-old can be wildly different than that of your average 12-year-old.

But as you zoom in, that same wide range can also be seen within a single class of middle grade readers—and within a single reader themselves. Sometimes as teachers, librarians, parents, and authors, we get tunnel-vision when trying to recommend books to readers. “Oh, you loved a dragon book? Here’s another dragon book.” or “You liked this author, here’s another by that same author.”

Rather than a simple this-book-is-just-like-that-book mindset, I’d encourage all of us to look more deeply at books and readers and think about how to find matches in a multiplicity of ways.

What are we reading in 5th grade?

To illustrate the point, I’ve assembled a few locker snapshots—a quick look at some of the middle grade books my fifth graders are reading and loving at the moment. In addition to the breadth and diversity of books represented, I hope you will also notice some of the more unlikely pairings and juxtapositions within the locker of an individual reader.

Book stack including Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame by Supriya Kelkar, Star-Crossed by Barbara Dee, Ahimsa by Supriya Kelkar, Witchlings book 1 by Clairbel Ortega, and Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

This reader has Strong as Fire, Fierce as Flame by Supriya Kelkar, Star-Crossed by Barbara Dee, Ahimsa by Supriya Kelkar, Witchlings book 1 by Claribel Ortega, and Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga. They’ve chosen three different genres (historical fiction, contemporary realistic fiction, and fantasy) across two different formats (prose novels and novels-in-verse). Some are in series; some are standalone books; some are by the same author but not in a series. While all the books feature strong female characters, some of them are more isolated, some are in an ensemble cast, and some are in a storyline that embraces LGBTQIA+ themes.

Book covers The Great Treehouse War by Lisa Graff, Sidekicks by Dan Santat, Breakout by Kate Messner, The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street by Lindsay Currie, a Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel by Ann M. Martin, Four Eyes by Rex Ogle and Dave Valeza, and House Arrest but K.A. Holt
This reader has The Great Treehouse War by Lisa Graff, Sidekicks by Dan Santat, Breakout by Kate Messner, The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street by Lindsay Currie, a Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel by Ann M. Martin, Four Eyes by Rex Ogle and Dave Valeza, and House Arrest but K.A. Holt. This reader is exploring genres from horror to adventure to contemporary realistic fiction. They love graphic novels but also prose novels and combinations. (Breakout is a clever medley of prose, images, newspaper articles, etc.) They are reading a wide variety of authors and stories featuring both solitary characters and those in big groups.

Book covers including
This reader has Crushing It by Erin Becker, Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind by Misa Sugiura, Pax Journey Home by Sara Pennypacker and Jon Klassen, and three Warriors books by Erin Hunter (in two different series). For genres, there is realistic fiction and several varieties of fantasy including high fantasy, low fantasy, and talking-animal fantasy (which should be an official genre in my mind). There are novels in alternate voices and regular prose, and there are old standby series plus brand-new debut books.

Broadening Horizons

One way to broaden students’ reading horizons is to share a wide-range of books with them. As a teacher, I do a weekly First Chapter Friday book share, and I try to consciously include a variety of books by many different authors and in many different formats and genres. Librarians are another great resource, as they often curate book lists and displays around themes. The book list section on our website is another treasure-trove of a resource for finding new books.

For middle grade authors, I encourage you to also think broadly about the readers who might be interested in your book. Your book is never just one thing. It’s not “only” a grief book or “only” a sports book. You might entice readers by the genre of your book or by the setting. Readers might be looking for a big laugh or a solid cry. Someone may be drawn to your book for the range of characters represented or for the family-issues at home or for the musical instrument that keeps your main character grounded.

Every reader is a multiplicity of interests, experiences, and backgrounds. Rather than pigeon-holing middle grade readers, let’s embrace all their wide-ranging quirky quirks and help them fall in love with all kinds of books, stories, formats, and genres.

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Spies Like Us

By on April 12, 2017   /   Book Lists, Fiction, For Kids, For Librarians  

When I was a kid, my grandmother took me to see The HMS Pinafore, a Gilbert and Sullivan musical that premiered roughly one hundred and thirty nine years ago. It’s a story of mistaken identity that takes place on the high seas. Never mind that the elaborate costumes and high heeled shoes seemed utterly impractical for sailing, I was mesmerized. One thing in particular caught my attention and still drifts along behind me to this day. Buttercup, who the plot reveals to be an epic failure as a nanny (think the anti-Mary Poppins), sings a song called Things Are Seldom What They Seem. In the song, she offers a slew of ridiculous examples in support of this statement: skim milk masquerades as cream; highlows pass as patent leathers; jackdaws strut in peacock’s feathers.

Other than the milk reference I had no idea what she was going on about but the thought that what you see is not always what you get lit up my young imagination like a match in a gallon of gasoline. Imagine my delight to discover there were a number of authors taken with this idea, too. They wrote about spies. Who knew there were people out there in the world whose job it was to pretend to be something other than themselves? It’s no wonder that a geeky elementary school student who often wanted to blend into the walls would find this appealing. I started in on the spy novels and never looked back.

To this day I read and write about spies and spying and how things are never quite as they appear. And lucky for us, middle grade is chock full of spectacular spy writing. In no particular order, some of my current favorites. They’re not top secret so feel free to share.

  1. Spy School, by Stuart Gibbs (first in a series). Ben Ripley may only be in middle school, but he’s already pegged his dream job: C.I.A. or bust. So he’s thrilled when he’s recruited to the C.I.A.’s top secret Academy of Espionage. Only, it turns out, Ben hasn’t been brought in because the C.I.A. expects him to succeed. Instead, he’s been brought in as bait to catch a dangerous enemy agent. Now, Ben needs to step up his game before he ends up dead. Can he solve the crime, get the girl and save the day?
  1. Stormbreaker, by Anthony Horowitz (first in a series). They told him his uncle died in a car accident but fourteen year old Alex Rider knows that’s a lie. Still, nothing could prepare him for the news that his uncle was really a spy for MI6 , Britain’s top secret intelligence agency. Recruited to find his uncles killers, Alex finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
  1. Liar and Spy, by Rebecca Stead. When 7th grader Georges moves into a Brooklyn apartment building, he meets Safer, a 12 year old coffee drinking loner and self appointed spy. Georges becomes Safer’s first spy recruit. His assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer becomes more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: how far is too far to go for your only friend?
  1. Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. First published in 1964, this novel is the grandmother of all middle grade spy books. Harriet M. Welsch is a spy. In her notebook, she writes down everything she knows about everyone, even her classmates and her best friends. Then Harriet loses track of her notebook, and it ends up in the wrong hands. Before she can stop them, her friends have read the always truthful, sometimes awful things she’s written about each of them. Will Harriet find a way to put her life and her friendships back together?

Do you have a favorite spy novel? I’d love to hear about it! Until then, make sure no one is following you…

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Author Website Page Update

By on November 16, 2015   /   For Kids  

Kids love finding out about their favorite authors. Here are some popular middle grade writer and series websites for them, their families and their teachers to check out!

From Kwame Alexander to Dav Pilkey and Jacqueline Woodson, these authors are all about interacting with and providing fun content for their young readers.

This is an update to the list, and we plan to update it again in the near future, so if you’d like to find out more about an author not here, let us know in the comments section.

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