You asked for our favorite middle grade reads of 2021 so here they are! Now that summer is here, Rebecca, Richelle, and I are thrilled to recommend these middle grade books for your vacation. They are perfect for the beach, car, airplane, even when waiting in line at your favorite amusement park. The Truths We Hold (Young Readers Edition) by Kamala Harris Before she was … Continue reading Great Middle Grade Books for Summer 2021
Enduring Freedom is a young adult novel written in dual points of view by Jawad Arash and Trent Reedy. This novel releases at a perfect time as the US military prepares to leave Afghanistan and the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 comes later this year. Synopsis: On September 11, 2001, the lives of two boys on opposite sides of the world are changed in an instant. … Continue reading Book Review: Enduring Freedom
Welcome to Windows & Mirrors, where we feature books that provide us windows to lives outside our own and mirrors to our shared common human experiences. This week we are featuring GAME OF STARS, book #2 in the KIRANMALA AND THE KINGDOM BEYOND series by Sayantani DasGupta. Princess Kiranmala is back home in plain old New Jersey, trying to readjust to normal middle school life. Just four months ago … Continue reading Featured: GAME OF STARS
Publisher’s Description of Salt Roaming the Mediterranean Sea on sailboats and hunting down monsters is the only life seventeen-year-old Indi and his siblings have ever known. He never loved it, but now that his parents are gone—vanished during a hunt three months ago—it’s harder and harder to fight his desire to escape. He’s constantly battling his ferocious love for his siblings and the temptation of … Continue reading Recommended: SALT by Hannah Moscowitz
Publisher’s Description Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet—her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” Until her mom brings home a live specimen and Nita decides she wants out; dissecting a scared teenage boy is a step too far. But when she decides to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold in … Continue reading Recommended: NOT EVEN BONES by Rebecca Schaeffer
Welcome to Windows & Mirrors, where we feature books that provide us windows to lives outside our own and mirrors to our shared common human experiences. I’m happy to be able to talk about ONE TRUE WAY by Shannon Hitchcock. This is the story of Allie Drake, a middle school girl figuring out how she fits into the world. Welcome to Daniel Boone Middle School … Continue reading Windows and Mirrors: ONE TRUE WAY
We are coming to the end of another Poetry Month, and we would be remiss to let it go without highlighting a staggering new work by Nikki Grimes. ONE LAST WORD is an ode to the Harlem Renaissance, but also thoroughly modern. It utilizes the Golden Shovel form, in which a line from a previous poem, or the entire text of a short poem, is … Continue reading Windows & Mirrors: One Last Word
No matter who you are and where you live, you have to admit there are problems in every country and the world. They are individual and global issues, and each one affects us differently. You may be passionate about gun violence, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, Black Lives Matter, poverty, war, global warming, or hundreds of other issues. Even looking at just one and what it … Continue reading Book Recommendation: How I Resist: Activism and Hope For the Next Generation
Today I’m happy to interview my fellow Winged Penner and critique partner, Olivia Kiernan, to celebrate the US release of her adult thriller, Too Close to Breathe. Driven. Polished. Perfect. Dead. Eleanor Costello is found hanged in her home. There is no note. And her husband is missing. The suicide turned murder investigation soon spirals outwards leading Detective Frankie Sheehan and her team onto a … Continue reading Happy US Book Birthday – Too Close to Breathe
This story is as beautiful as it’s cover. It sends the reader soaring through the clouds, takes us back down to Earth, and through the trauma of heartache. It is as much a love story about flying as it is about relationships. Grace Lafferty only feels alive when she’s dangling 500 feet above ground. As a post-World War I wing walker, Grace is determined to … Continue reading Book Recommendation: Nothing But Sky
Welcome to Windows & Mirrors where we feature books that provide us windows to lives outside our own and mirrors to our shared common human experiences. March is Women’s History Month, so today we are featuring Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. Hidden Figures is the untold story of the black women mathematicians who helped win the space race. My daughter and I saw Hidden Figures … Continue reading Windows & Mirrors: HIDDEN FIGURES by Margot Lee Shetterly
It’s here! The cover of the third BRAVE NEW GIRLS anthology. The newest edition, titled BRAVE NEW GIRLS: TALES OF HEROINES WHO HACK!, is a collection of twenty-three short stories featuring teen girls who hack not only computers, but any puzzle they encounter. And I’m fortunate to have one of my stories included: The Experiment Called Life. These anthologies, created and edited by sci-fi authors … Continue reading Cover Reveal! BRAVE NEW GIRLS
