Middle Grade Reading for August

I've interviewed some MG novelists on my blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, over the past month, and thought I'd share some of their comments...

Caroline Huntoon is the author of the new novel Going Overboard. When I asked Huntoon about the inspiration for the novel, they said, "My parents got married when I was 16 -- but my brother and stepsister were 10 and in the same class! There were five kids in that equation, and my stepmother and dad had to work so hard to make the family work." They added, "None of us actively tried to break them up (I don't think), but we definitely didn't always cooperate. I riffed on that idea -- but made it much gayer! Ultimately, my family is such a wonderful and important part of my life now, it's hard to imagine life without them!"

J.E. Thomas's novel is called The A.I. Incident. She said of the inspiration for the book, "AI is ubiquitous in conversation now. It's like the air. We hear that AI can do homework. AI can solve the teacher shortage. AI can level the playing field between well-resourced and under-resourced schools. AI can create (or steal) jobs. AI can write movies...and songs...and menus. AI can... AI can…" She added, "When I spoke with students while doing school visits for my debut novel, Control Freaks, AI was very much on their minds. When I said that I was working on a book about AI, the response was huge! Kids have so many opinions, so many thoughts, and so many questions about this technology. I enjoyed exploring a few of those in The AI Incident."

Finally, I interviewed Raj Sidhu about his novel Thrash Force. Asked about the inspiration for the story, he said, "I turned to the things that did bring me joy: the books and media of my youth (think Courage the Cowardly Dog, Powerpuff Girls, and Captain Underpants), as well as the wacky, deeply-unserious D&D adventures that my friends and I were doing pre-pandemic." He added, "So there it was: the spirit of my favorite kids’ cartoons wrapped in a body constructed from RPG mechanics. I began to noodle around on the page, and to my delight, the writing flowed. Within five or six pages, I was hooked: I was slinging puns, and putting these delightful characters I’d discovered up to all sorts of mischief."

Happy reading!

--Deborah Kalb