Middle Grade Fiction

Eleven-year-old Maizy Chen travels from Los Angeles with her single mom to spend the summer in Last Chance, Minnesota. They are there to help with the family’s Chinese restaurant, the Golden Palace, because her grandfather is ill.

African American Melvin is about to start high school in Spokane, Washington, in the 1950s, following in the footsteps of his high-achieving older brother, Chuck, and older sister, Marian. It would be a daunting prospect even if he didn’t have a stutter.

In 1860, sensitive, sheltered Silas, 12 lives with his father, Martin Bird, and Mittenwool, a ghost who’s been Silas’s companion for as long as he can remember.

Chinese American Mei, 13, lives in a Sierra Nevada lumber camp in 1885. Her father, Hao, is the head cook; her best friend, Bee, is the white daughter of the camp manager.

Twelve-year-old Sofia, Samoan/white, living in New Zealand in the mid-1970s, is chosen to participate in a regional speech competition after wowing with a classroom presentation titled “About Me.”

Evie is teased by other middle school girls at her Jewish private school because of her parents’ work–they run a funeral parlor; work that Evie is interested in pursuing someday.

Bug and Bug’s mom are grieving Bug’s Uncle Roderick, who lived with them and recently passed away after a long illness. It was Uncle Roderick who taught Bug about ghosts, so when spooky things start happening–doors open and close, objects moved around–Bug suspects it’s Uncle Roderick, trying to communicate something important.

In the dead of night, Kazu spies a girl in white emerging from his family’s altar room in Masuda, Japan. The next day, Kazu is bewildered when his classmates act as though the girl, Akari, has been a member of their class for years.

Nathan, 11, is spending a few summer weeks with his paternal grandmother, Nali, who lives in a mobile home on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

Petra Peña, 12, her little brother, Javier, and their scientist parents are among those chosen to flee earth in 2061 as the planet faces destruction.