Middle Grade Reading for April

The cherry blossoms are out here in the D.C. area, and it's time to look at some new middle grade books for spring reading! Here are some excerpts from my book blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb.

 

Christina Uss is the author of the new MG novel Midnight Mayhem. When I asked her about the inspiration for the novel, she said: "Some ideas bubble inside my brain for a loooong time before they are ready to be written down. Eight years ago, I wanted to write a story about a kid who stops sleeping for the rest of his life. That idea waited quietly in The Pot of Possible Book Ideas until I saw a magazine ad that said, 'The only cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.' Boredom! Aha! I knew facing boredom would be part of my sleepless story, so I added this thought to my pot: 'Boredom is the worst, how do kids face it?'" She added, "The final step that got the Pot of Possible Ideas cooking was rereading a childhood favorite, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death. This book by Daniel Pinkwater makes me laugh every time, and I knew, 'This! This is what I want to write! A funny story of midnight adventures gone wrong!' And here we are."

 

Ross Montgomery's new novel is titled Small Wonder. In our interview, he said: "I've always leaned towards making books with complex plots and sprawling narratives - they're exactly the kind of books that I loved reading when I was a kid. But recently, I've found that I've wanted to go in the other direction - writing stories that are as simple as possible, with straight-forward narratives. As odd as it sounds, they're actually harder to write! The challenge I set myself was to write a book that felt like it could have been written a hundred years ago, in a good way: something that felt as simple and honest as a fairytale."

 

Dusti Bowling is the author of the new novel Sir Edmund of the Wild West: Mystery in the Grand Canyon, the start of a new series. She told me: "It really started with the idea to write a story told from the perspective of a dog that could see the ghosts and monsters that people can't see. The first version of this story was actually quite dark and scary and didn't really work because for some reason the dog ended up coming out British (I must've been watching a lot of British movies at the time!) and really funny. My editor loved the silly British dog, though, and asked if I'd be willing to give him a new story. I decided it would be fun to explore real Western mysteries. And, of course, make the ghosts far less scary."

 

Happy reading!

 

--Deborah Kalb