Category Archives: Middle Grade & Children’s

This tag contains all books tagged as Middle Grade fiction and relevant non-fiction.

Salt by Helen Frost

Anikwa and James, twelve years old in 1812, spend their days fishing, trapping, and exploring together in the forests of the Indiana Territory. To Anikwa and his family, members of the Miami tribe, this land has been home for centuries. As traders, James’s family has ties to the Miami community as well as to the American soldiers in the fort. Now tensions are rising—the British and American armies prepare to meet at Fort Wayne for a crucial battle, and Native Americans from surrounding tribes gather in Kekionga to protect… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Racism
  • Starvation
  • Fire
  • Siege of Fort Wayne & 1812 War
  • Animal death

Salt Magic by Hope Larson and Rebecca Mock

When Vonceil’s older brother, Elber, comes home to their family’s Oklahoma farm after serving on the front lines of World War I, things aren’t what she expects. His experiences have changed him into a serious and responsible man who doesn’t have time for Vonceil anymore. He even marries the girl he had left behind. Then a mysterious and captivating woman shows up at the farm and confronts Elber for leaving her in France. When he refuses to leave his wife, she puts a curse on the family well, turning the entire town’s water supply into saltwater. Who is this lady dressed all… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Cheating mentioned
  • Body horror (characters magically turned into gems)
  • Imprisonment
  • Threats of gun violence to a child
  • Animal attack (snake), including death from snakebite

Zombie Tag by Hannah Moskowitz

Thirteen-year-old Wil Lowenstein copes with his brother’s death by focusing on Zombie Tag, a mafia/capture the flag hybrid game where he and his friends fight off brain-eating zombies with their mothers’ spatulas. What Wil doesn’t tell anybody is that if he could bring his dead brother back as a zombie, he would in a heartbeat. But when Wil finds a way to summon all the dead within five miles, he’s surprised to discover that his back-from-the-dead brother is emotionless and distant.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Claustrophobia
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a brother from an asthma attack

Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson

Kaylani is a born-and-bred Brooklyn girl. She expects to feel like a fish out of water spending the hot and sticky summer on Martha’s Vineyard with family friends, the Watsons. But her mother insists, especially since Kaylani still spends long hours on the phone with her imprisoned father. The Watsons live in the town of Oak Bluffs, a place with a rich Black history that fascinates Kaylani. Though the Watsons’ daughter, London, is snobby and unfriendly, Kaylani ends up connecting with some other kids in the town, who show… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Classism
  • Emesis
  • Blood depiction
  • Grief & loss depiction
  • Death of a child
  • Murder
  • Imprisonment
  • Bullying

Alice Austen Lived Here by Alex Gino

Sam is very in touch with their own queer identity. They’re nonbinary, and their best friend, TJ, is nonbinary as well. Sam’s family is very cool with it… as long as Sam remembers that nonbinary kids are also required to clean their rooms, do their homework, and try not to antagonize their teachers too much. The teacher-respect thing is hard when it comes to Sam’s history class, because their teacher seems to believe that only Dead Straight Cis White Men are responsible for history. When Sam’s home borough of… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Queerphobia & coming out themes
  • Racism
  • Police violence mentioned

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead. There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more. But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod’s family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Drugging
  • Murder of a father, mother & sister by stabbing
  • Kidnapping
  • Gun & knife violence
  • Car accident mentioned (hit-and-run)
  • Bullying

Ali Cross by James Patterson

The brilliant DC detective who never gives up on a case.Ali CrossThe tenacious kid who’s determined to follow in his father’s footsteps.The case that finally gives him a chanceAli knows Gabe Qualls better than anyone, so when his friend goes missing, Ali jumps right into action. Being Alex Cross’s son has taught him the skills he needs to solve the intelligence, persistence, and logic. One thing he didn’t inherit? Patience.Because Ali knows that with every day that passes without the police finding Gabe, the less likely it is that he’ll ever be found. And being Alex Cross’s son, he refuses to accept those odds.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Disappearance of a friend

Aggie Flea is NOT a Liar! by Tania Ingram

Meet Aggie Flea-a girl with a BIG imagination … that lands her in even BIGGER trouble! When a mysterious new neighbour arrives in the middle of the night, Aggie’s convinced he’s a vampire! Can she prove it? Or will everyone think she’s a liar?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Mentions of parental divorce
  • Minor bullying

AfterMath by Emily Barth Isler

After her brother’s death from a congenital heart defect, twelve-year-old Lucy is not prepared to be the new kid at school–especially in a grade full of survivors of a shooting that happened four years ago. Without the shared past that both unites and divides her classmates, Lucy feels isolated and unable to share her family’s own loss, which is profoundly different from the trauma of her peers. Lucy clings to her love of math, which provides the absolute answers she craves. But through budding friendships and an after… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Hospitalisation mentioned
  • Death of a brother from a congenital heart defect
  • School shooting massacre (aftermath, theme)

The Adventurer’s Guide to Successful Escapes by Wade Albert White

Anne has spent most of her thirteen years dreaming of the day she and her best friend Penelope will finally leave Saint Lupin’s Institute for Perpetually Wicked and Hideously Unattractive Children. When the big day arrives, a series of very curious happenings lead to Anne being charged with an epic quest. Anne, Penelope, and new questing partner Hiro have only days to travel to strange new locales, solve myriad riddles, and triumph over monstrous foes–or face the horrible consequences.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical injury, including an almost amputated arm
  • Sword violence & stabbing
  • Explosion
  • Kidnapping & captivity
  • Death from a fall
  • Animal attack