Middle Grade Fiction

Admired for being smart and “nice,” the girls in Shaindy Goodman’s sixth grade class at Bais Yaakov Orthodox Jewish day school don’t bully Shaindy outright, but neither do they befriend or include her.

Three compelling storylines move back and forth between the first months of the pandemic in 2020, and Ukraine and Brooklyn in 1932 and 1933.

An author’s note reveals the inspiration behind this delightfully odd retelling: A year after first stumbling upon the Tyrolean folktale “The Skull,” Klassen reread it and found that he misremembered significant parts of it. From that slightly off tale, “[his] brain’s version,” he wrote The Skull.

In this follow-up to In the Beautiful Country, Anna (Taiwanese name Ai Shi) is finally adjusting to life in the United States, where she is finishing sixth grade.

Johannes takes his job as the “eyes” of the seaside park where he’s lived in the wild since he was a puppy very seriously.

Eleven-year-old Ginny’s dad is an army doctor. Ginny (white) and her older sister, Allie, are blindsided when they learn his posting to Afghanistan in the new year has been changed; he leaves shortly after their expected move from North Carolina to Maryland at the end of the school year.

Twelve-year-old Wesley Wilder (Upper Skagit) starts the day nervous but excited on two fronts. Her poem, “We Still Belong,” is in the school newspaper for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and she plans to ask a boy named Ryan Thomas, whom she’s gotten to know through gaming club, to the upcoming school dance.

Noah’s best friend, Lewis, was killed in a car accident several months ago … Noah has not only lost his best friend but the essential sense of being known, seen, and understood.

A boisterous yet tender tale set along the Silk Road in the late 11th century begins with an orphaned boy, Omar, rescued from attack by Samir, a merchant traveling as part of a small caravan.