Middle Grade Fiction for Spring

 Middle Grade Fiction for Spring

Now that spring is right around the corner (although it felt like winter here today!), I thought I'd share a few recent interviews with middle grade writers from my blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb. 

I've interviewed Terri Libenson many times about her wonderful Emmie & Friends graphic novel series, and our latest Q&A focused on her newest novel, Entirely Emmie. I asked her about the theme of friendship in the story, and she said, "I love unlikely friendships, and that’s also an ongoing theme in many of my books. I think it shows that you don’t always have to have the same likes, outlooks, or interests to strike up a friendship. Sometimes it just occurs spontaneously or when you’re thrown into a situation together (in this case with Emmie and Joe or with Anthony and Leah in Always Anthony). I’ve had friendships like that myself, and they’ve been so valuable to me."

 

Sydney Dunlap's compelling new middle grade novel is titled Racing the Clouds. I asked her how she created her protagonist, Sage, a girl who's dealing with difficult family circumstances. She said: "I wanted to write about a character who is in a difficult situation but has ways to help herself through it. That’s how I decided that she should be a runner. Sage's love of running also serves to connect her with her mom. And Sage's love of animals helps her through hard times too and makes it possible to bridge the gap with her grandmother. Sage has conflicting feelings when she’s invited to visit the grandparents she has never met—and I thought it would be interesting to explore a character who struggles with guilt for something that really isn’t her fault, and then puts it on herself to try to fix a situation she had nothing to do with."

 

Last but not least, Ann E. Burg's thoughtful new middle grade novel in verse, Force of Nature, takes a look at the life of environmentalist Rachel Carson. Burg told me, "I had been reading up on climate change and actually wondering what one person could do. I kept coming across snippets of Rachel Carson’s writings, and while I knew she is considered by some to be the mother of the environmental movement, I knew very little about her life. I thought it was time to reintroduce her to a younger audience."

 

Happy reading, everyone!

 

--Deborah Kalb