Middle Grade Reading for September

There are so many great new middle grade books out there, and I wanted to highlight three of them. I've interviewed the authors of these books on my blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, and would like to share some of what they said...

Cordelia Jensen is the author of the new middle grade novel in verse Lilac and the Switchback. She said of her inspiration for the book, "It was actually the setting of Lehigh University that first inspired the story! I love the landscape that surrounds that school. It evokes quintessential Pennsylvania countryside; you can look up to the mountains and then down to the river." She added, "Although I personally am more of a 'water person,' when I was on the college tour of the school with my own twins, I pictured a 12-year-old girl looking uphill. I knew the girl would help literally blaze a trail while, simultaneously, embarking on an emotional journey to help find her place in the world."

 Laura Lavoie is the author of The Thirteen Doors of Black House. She said, "I was inspired to write this book after a summer trip to Maine. A relative we were visiting there mentioned that Stephen King’s house was a little drive up the coast from where we were staying. My husband and I are both big fans, so we decided to go check it out." She added, "After we got home from our trip, I wondered, What if you could visit your favorite author’s house but actually stay there, like a vacation rental? The idea for The Thirteen Doors of Black House was born, and the rest evolved from there."

Finally, Anne Blankman's new novel is The Enemy's Daughter. She said, "When I was working as a middle school librarian, I collaborated with a social studies teacher on a unit about World War I. I was standing in the back of the classroom, waiting to help students with research, while the teacher talked about major wartime events, including the bombing of the Lusitania. I thought, I wonder what it would have been like to have been a passenger on that ship." She added, "That thought stuck in my mind, and I began playing with ideas about a young girl who survives the sinking of the Lusitania—and who finds herself shipwrecked in an 'enemy' country."

--Deborah Kalb