Tuesday, January 3, 2017

Ten of 2016's best middle grade novels

At the BN Kids blog, Charlotte Taylor tagged ten of her favorite middle grade novels from last year, including:
Mayday, by Karen Harrington

Wayne’s way of coping with the regular awkwardness of middle school, and with the more particular awkwardness of his divorced parents, is to throw interesting facts into any silence; it makes his mom and his sort-of almost-girlfriend smile. But on the way home from his soldier uncle’s burial at National Cemetery, Wayne and his mom’s plane falls from the sky. Wayne’s throat is injured, and he can’t talk. Stuck in silence, and stuck with his Grandfather moving in after the crash (he’s an ex-sergeant who treats Wayne like a rather feeble new recruit), he starts to really think about his family and himself for the first time. It’s a moving story of family, identity, and survival, with plenty to chuckle at along the way.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue