9 Amazing Middle Grades Novels: Windows and Mirrors

Sometimes I finish a middle grades book and think, “I can see why a kid might like that, but because I’m not the target audience, it just didn’t grab me.” Then I find one that makes me laugh, cry, and never once check how many pages are left. I've run into a whole raft of these recently. These books’ characters have been just as real and compelling, their issues just as significant, their style as intriguing as any adult literature, all done with a lightness of touch, a belief in growth, and an ultimate hopefulness. This gives me an optimism that books can still be windows and mirrors for my students: windows through which my students can see the experiences of others unlike them as well as mirrors where they can examine their own experiences, growing in understanding of and empathy for all image bearers of God, appreciating our similarities and our differences, motivated and knowledgeable about loving those neighbors. 

Here are some of the books I’ve been reading recently:

1. Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed. Amal is a Pakistani village girl, determined to become a teacher, who falls afoul of the local landlord. An excellent introduction to the reality of indentured servitude and issues of girls’ education.
2. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson. “I want each of you to say to the others, ‘I will harbor you.’” A teacher in New York City tells her 6 sixth graders this, and over the course of the school year, they do exactly that as they gradually share their stories—Black, white, biracial, Latinx; an incarcerated father, a deported father, a dead mother.
3. Front Desk by Kelly Yang. How can a book can be laugh-out-loud funny while dealing with issues of immigration, unfair employment practices, and discrimination? Mia Tang’s family are Chinese immigrants who live in and manage one of those cheap hotels 10 minutes from Disneyland that I passed many times when I was in high school.
4. A Place to Belong by Cynthia Kadohata. At the end of World War 2, Hanako and her family leave the U.S. internment camp and return to the Japan her father left long ago to live with the grandparents she has never met who are poor tenant farmers in the mountains outside Hiroshima. A nuanced and unusual perspective so appropriate for my Japanese international school students!
5. Ghost Boys by Jewel Parker Rhodes. A 2-line blurb cannot begin to communicate how beautifully this story weaves together perspectives and past and present to come up with an ultimately hopefully message for the living to make a difference. The ghost of a young victim of police violence meets the ghost of Emmett Till, who helps him process what has happened, so he in turn can help the daughter of the police officer. 
6. Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper. Melody Brooks is trapped in a body she has little control over due to cerebral palsy, but she is determined to find a way to communicate all the things going on inside her brilliant mind. A story of resilience, growth, and empathy. 
7. All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook by Leslie Connor. Perry was born and raised inside a prison in tiny Surprise, Nebraska. He has an unconventional community there, until the new district attorney makes him move into a foster home. But that isn’t the end of the story. Full of humor, wisdom, and a commitment to integrity.
8. Adventures with Waffles by Maria Parr. Another laugh-out-loud funny book. Translated from Norwegian, it relates the antics and adventures of Trille and Lena in their little community on an isolated fjord. Then the adventures all begin shaping toward a plot, and it took my breath away—how the story enfolded friendship and loss and fear and family and growing through it all. 
9. Ungifted by Gordon Korman. A hilarious story about Donovan Curtis, troublemaker extraordinaire though otherwise entirely ordinary, who gets accidentally sent to the gifted program instead of punished one day. I laughed, and I loved how everyone ends up growing without any of it being contrived or moralistic.  

What middle grades books have you loved lately and why?

P.S. For others I've been reading in the last 6 months, see the following blog posts:

• "Falling in Love with Middle School Books All Over Again" 
• "Reading Books to See and Love Our Neighbors"