GreenBeanTeenQueen

Why I Love Upper Middle Grade Stories Natalie Aguirre is an aspiring middle grade and YA fantasy writer. She’s an attorney by day, a wife, and a mother of one child. She blogs at Literary Rambles and interviews mostly debut and/or middle grade authors, spotlighting their books with ARC or book giveaways on Mondays and some Wednesdays. You can also follow her on Twitter @NatalieIAguirre or on Facebook . I’m a huge fan of upper middle grade stories because they’re usually very plot driven, have great main  characters and voices, move the story along quickly, and often have sweet romances that don’t overtake the plot. And middle grade is such a fantastic time for kids to get excited about reading before the demands of homework, sports, and other activities often sadly make it harder for high school kids to find time to read for pleasure. Good upper grade books help kids make the leap from shorter novels to longer, more in depth ones. I thought I’d share a few of my...

2014 is turning out to be a great year for middle grade! Here are even more 2014 middle grade releases to look forward to this year. And if you missed part one, be sure to check out Middle Grade to Look Forward to in 2014. -A young restaurant reviewer? Love it! -It's hard to believe that it's been long enough for September 11th to be the main plot of a novel, but this one sounds intense! -Haven't you always longed for a middle grade book about band geeks? -A great cover and I've read some great reviews which have gotten me excited to read this one! -The tagline "Saving the school one con at a time" sold me. -Family secrets and a mystery? Yes please! -Maps, mysteries, and a gorgeous cover-I'm in love! What other middle grade novels are you looking forward to this year?

Sarah Albee writes nonfiction for middle grade readers. She is the author of Poop Happened and Bugged. You can find her online at:   http://www.sarahalbeebooks.com/   I write nonfiction for middle graders, and my mission is to get kids who’ve been traumatized by deadly-dull social studies textbooks to unthink that they hate history. One tactic I use is to select a subject kids will be interested in—be it sanitation, insects, clothing, disease, poison—and trace it chronologically through history. I feel an obligation to entertain them, to astonish them, to make them laugh. After all, they could be reading fiction. I want them to see that history is full of conflict, tension, controversy, emotion, drama.  Humorous writing does not equal unserious writing. Some of my favorite adult writers – Mary Roach, May Berenbaum, Stephen Jay Gould--are serious scholars and hilarious writers. Most of my favorite middle school history writers are that, too. They unders...

I'm over at The Nerdy Book Club  talking about a few of my favorite middle grade reads! Come check it out!

It's the first day of  Spring-hopefully Spring is coming soon! To celebrate, here's a special So You Want to Read Middle Grade post all about natural magic. Julia Mary Gibson’s novel  Copper Magic  has grandmothers in it, and a girl who believes she needs magic.  Visit  juliamarygibson.com  to find out more, or follow her on Twitter @juliamarygibson. NATURAL MAGIC AND THE GRANDMOTHERS Growing up, my summers were spent in the woods.  Our woods weren’t very wild (no bears, no way of getting lost), but there were plenty of fern shadows and shafts of magical sunlight and mossy places that my grandmother said fairies might visit if we left a crumb of sponge cake for them.  To me, magic lived in the wind and tangled roots and completely existed.  And so my favorite books were about feasible magic, believable magic, the magic of natural law.  Of  course  there could be borrowers like Arrie...

Stephanie Smallwood is an Early Literacy Specialist Librarian (and an awesome co-worker of mine!) Middle grade literature is the equivalent to getting a driver's license to young readers.  So much practice for so long leads up to the freedom of finally being able to sit down with a book ALONE and read it.  This is a critical moment for children, so much can go wrong at this point: the books can be too hard, too easy, too boring, too far from their comfort zone, too close to their comfort zone, they can fall in love with a book that a friend doesn't like, and so on.  Some kids love the freedom, others are overwhelmed and unsure how to choose.  So much pressure!  What's a librarian/teacher/parent/caring individual to do?  Exactly what we've been doing here, talking about different books so when the child that needs that book is in front of us we have something in our head to put in their hands.  So, here are a few books that have been importan...

Stepahnie Whelan is a children's librarian and blogs at http://shanshad1.wordpress.com/ When it comes to science fiction, let’s face it: the genre tends to get lost in amid more prolific genres on the middle grade shelves.  Fantasy (which is often lumped together with science fiction) tends to overshadow the genre.  There’s still quite a bit out there if you know where to look and what kind of science fiction you’re looking for. The last few years we’re beginning to see an upswing  in SF books for kids.  The first half of my list are all titles that have been published within the last year. 1. The Water Castle by Megan Frazer Blakemore (Walker Books, 2013) This is near-future or contemporary science fiction.  One of the better books from last year, it is possible to imagine everything in the story has a fact-based explanation, but for the science fiction crowd, the possibilities also allow for other interpretations.  The focus on ...