Middle Grade March Reading Round-Up

ft. some upcoming releases!

This March, I participated in the Middle Grade March readathon, which is organized on Instagram. It’s simple: read middle grade books. And as someone who hadn’t read any yet this year or much last year, I thought it would

I ended up not doing much on Instagram (yet) or following the challenges, but I figured I would write up my thoughts on the 8 books I read over here.

Without further ado…

Iveliz Explains it All by Andrea Beatriz Arango

I’ve been trying to catch up on the ALA award winners/honors that I didn’t get to last year (we own quite a few, which unfortunately means they don’t have the stickers, but also means we have good taste), and this Newbery Honor novel-in-verse was the top of my list. Even though this is a novel-in-verse, it is heavy. Iveliz writes poems in her diary as a way of coping with her struggles with anger and friendship in 7th grade, much of which is brought on by PTSD she has. (A fair warning: there are some thoughts of self-harm and reference to it happening before.) She’s also helping her grandmother with dementia adapt to moving in with them (in Baltimore) from Puerto Rico.

Fight + Flight by Jules Machias

Jules Machias is becoming one of my favorite upper middle grade writers. I read their debut, Both Can Be True, last year. I know exactly what students I would’ve handed these books too. They’re long and advanced in the way they throw a lot of content-specific vocabulary at you—both in terms of queerness but also things like animal care/rescue and, in this book, physical therapy and associated physiology—and don’t spend too much time waiting for you to understand it all. It’s a little dizzying at first, but I found both to be compulsively readable after a certain point.

This one is about two girls: Avery, who is impulsive and outspoken and sure of who she is but dealing with physical setbacks after a surgery from a dirt bike accident and being diagnosed with hEDS; and Sarah, who is quiet, Catholic, and struggling with anxiety after her aunt passed away from COVID complications and her cousin (also her best friend) moved away as a result. Sarah’s perspective is written in the form of her journals with accompanying art. The two bond during a scary active shooter drill that everyone thinks is real, where surprisingly Avery is freaking out and Sarah is calm. This book deals with heavy topics, and it doesn’t shy away from complicating them.

The Science of Being Angry by Nicole Melleby

I didn’t get into this book as quickly as I hoped, but then I reached a point where it became an emotional roller coaster for me. Like, I cried. Joey has so much trouble controlling her emotions and has so many big feelings about blended and queer family (two moms, two fellow triplets, one step-brother). It becomes less a question of her genetics and finding her donor and more about the family as it is. I also loved the parents are flawed, too. (Disclaimer: Nicole is a writing friend of my partner’s.)

Nikhil Out Loud by Maulik Pancholy

This was my audiobook listen for the month and it was delightful! It’s read by the author, who is also an actor, I recommend the experience. For the first time in a while, I felt myself wanting to listen to an audiobook on the way to work.

I really enjoyed Pancholy’s The Best at It back in 2019, and this one is different in a key way: the main character is much more self-assured and already knows he is gay. In fact, he is a voice actor on a children’s animated TV show starring an Indian-American just like him! The catch, though, is that he has stage fright (and also can’t sing), which is an issue when he is cast in the school musical, seemingly just because he is known. He’s also just moved to Ohio from LA to take care of an ailing grandparent. Furthermore, his voice has started cracking, an inevitable part of his life, but it means his voice acting on the TV show is going to be up soon.

I will say, it’s great to see so many middle grade books where schools and adults support the LGBTQ kids…but I’m wondering if that is going to change (or should?) with a lot of these laws that are passing making it more difficult to support queer kids in schools, especially. It’s great to have uplifting stories, but also there are kids who need stories that reflect their circumstances, too.

Dear Mothman by Robin Gow

This wasn’t initially on my list because I’m just not really into the supernatural and Mothman, but I went to the book launch and heard the author read the beginning of it and just wanted to continue (disclaimer: Robin is an “agent sibling” of my partner). While I maybe wasn’t as invested in the “is Mothman real?” aspect as the main character and some other readers might be, I did love the connection Noah had with him and how that reflected his own identity, figuring out his transness, his grief, and his friendships.

The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet by Jake Maia Arlow

(Disclaimer: I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this title for review from Penguin Classroom and Netgalley.)

Jake Maia Arlow is one of my favorite writers right now and especially excels at middle grade voice, and this one is a worthy successor to their first middle grade book, Almost Flying. Following a seventh grader who becomes diagnosed with Crohn’s, it has so much humor and I’m convinced more books should talk about poop! It’s a daily part of our lives! It’s especially a daily part of Al’s life, as she struggles with her mother’s constant worrying over her and being different. But when she joins a support group for other middle schoolers dealing with the same family of diseases—later dubbed “The Bathroom Club” in honor of The Breakfast Club—she finds a home.

This book is also a queer coming-of-age tale from multiple perspectives and identities and it’s just delightful. Like Arlow’s other middle grade, I love how our main character makes mistakes. A gift of the premise is also that digestion is affected by stress and emotional turmoil, so as Al’s personal life gets complicated, her Crohn’s gets worse.

Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff

I’ve been trying to catch up on some books I didn’t get to when they were released (some, like this one, I had an ARC of—though I read the finished copy), so I had to read Too Bright to See, the first middle grade novel by Kyle Lukoff. Look at all those awards!

Like Dear Mothman, this one involves the supernatural—a haunted house, specifically, with a ghost that needs our main character Bug to know something. The ghost appears to be the recently deceased uncle of Bug. There’s definitely something to be said about these two books and young trans characters connecting with the supernatural! In this one, dysphoria is its own kind of horror.

The ghost story is fairly straightforward and not particularly spooky—it reads more like a contemporary. But I really appreciated how Lukoff wove together shifting friendships and expectations on girls entering middle school. The most impressive was how the first-person narrative completely shifted in tone once Bug realized he is a trans boy…it became so much lighter and happier. Masterful.

Bonus: Tegan and Sara: Junior High by Tegan and Sara Quin, illustrated by Tillie Walden

(Disclaimer: I received an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for review from Netgalley.)

This one’s a bonus because I read it on April 1, but close enough, right? I might be a bad queer woman (or maybe just too young), but I honestly haven’t listened to much Tegan and Sara, at least not intentionally. What drew me to this one was the illustrator, Tillie Walden, whose style I love. (My partner and I have limited edition prints of On a Sunbeam in our room.) And middle grade graphic novels are always fun.

I thought this was going to be a sort of prequel graphic memoir to the sisters’ High School, a memoir they wrote that has also been adapted into a TV series (though it appears to not only cover high school). It seemed obvious from the title, but that was not the case—not quite. While the story draws on some key aspects of their history (explained in the author’s note), they made those key aspects happen earlier in their lives and also—this is the weirdest one—updated it to present day. This didn’t really work for me. It’s just bizarre to have Tegan and Sara talk about being influenced by Billie Eilish? Plus, I think it would be more interesting if it was historical. It doesn’t have to be changed to still appeal to today’s kids. The various references might become dated fast.

I did appreciate the complicated friendship dynamics of this story, as well as how that complexity related to the sisters’ queerness. It avoids several coming-out tropes.

As for the illustrations (which, reading an ARC, should not be considered finished), I loved how each twin had a color (blue or red) and how they would interject and give their inner thoughts throughout. It showed their relationship to each other at different points in the story. But I do wish there was more color in the regular pages. Most middle grade graphic novels are full color?

In other news…

• I got my initial New Jersey teaching certificate!

• I’ve been basking in the glory of the new boygenius album.

• My partner read way more books than me for Middle Grade March. Here is her roundup:

  Reading Update #2: Middle Grade March Madness

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