Category Archives: Middle Grade & Children’s

Kimmi: Queen of the Dingoes by Favel Parrett

Kimmi sleeps with her mama at her back, her aunty at her front and her three brothers squeezed in beside her. They are a family. But when the farmer who took her father returns to threaten the rest of them, Kimmi is separated from her mama. In an incredible act of determination, Kimmi’s mama runs over mountain tops and dusty red earth to spend one last day with her cub and share with her the knowledge that will one day make her a queen. This is Kimmi’s story, the story of how she became Queen of the Dingoes in a sanctuary that saves them from extinction. It is her mama’s story, too. But mostly it is a story that goes… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Murder of a brother/dingo cub by a hunter (on-page)
  • Animal death & hunting (on-page)
  • Animal injury including loss of ear (on-page)

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

Raymie Clarke has come to realize that everything, absolutely everything, depends on her. And she has a plan. If Raymie can win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition, then her father, who left town two days ago with a dental hygienist, will see Raymie’s picture in the paper and (maybe) come home. To win, not only does Raymie have to do good deeds and learn how to twirl a baton; she also has to contend with the wispy, frequently fainting Louisiana Elefante, who has a show-business background, and the fiery, stubborn Beverly Tapinski, who’s determined to… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Physical child abuse & parental abandonment
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Death of parents in a boating accident mentioned
  • Animal death (implications of death of a kitten, off-page)

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

One summer’s day, ten-year-old India Opal Buloni goes down to the local supermarket for some groceries – and comes home with a dog. But Winn-Dixie is no ordinary dog. It’s because of Winn-Dixie that Opal begins to make friends. And it’s because of Winn-Dixie that she finally dares to ask her father about her mother, who left when Opal was three. In fact, as Opal admits, just about everything that happens that summer is because of Winn-Dixie. 

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Alcohol consumption & abuse recounted

The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo

Walking through the misty Florida woods one morning, twelve-year-old Rob Horton is stunned to encounter a tiger—a real-life, very large tiger—pacing back and forth in a cage. What’s more, on the same extraordinary day, he meets Sistine Bailey, a girl who shows her feelings as readily as Rob hides his. As they learn to trust each other, and ultimately, to be friends, Rob and Sistine prove that some things—like memories, and heartaches, and tigers—can’t be locked up forever.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abandonment & physical child abuse
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Gun violence
  • Animal death & hunting
  • Bullying

Context : The protagonist’s father shoots a bird. Mentions of a child being beaten by their father for freeing a pet bird.

Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry—and that Flora will be changed too, as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted animal death
  • Animal attack
  • Animal illness & injury

Beverly, Right Here by Kate DiCamillo

Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, but that was when she was just a kid. By now, she figures, it’s not running away. It’s leaving. Determined to make it on her own, Beverly finds a job and a place to live and tries to forget about her dog, Buddy, now buried underneath the orange trees back home; her friend Raymie, whom she left without a word; and her mom, Rhonda, who has never cared about anyone but herself. Beverly doesn’t want to depend on anyone, and she definitely doesn’t want anyone to depend on her. But despite her best efforts, she can’t… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Abandonment
  • Parent with alcoholism
  • Smoking mentioned
  • Bullying
  • Animal death (pet dog)

The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo

In a time of war, a mysterious child appears at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Gentle Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, coated in dirt and blood and holding fast to the ear of Answelica the recalcitrant goat. As the monk nurses Beatryce to health, he uncovers her dangerous secret – one that imperils them all. And so it is that a girl with a head full of stories must venture into a dark wood in search of the castle of a king who wishes her dead. But should… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Parental abandonment mentioned (secondary character)
  • Death of a mother & father recounted
  • Murder of a brother recounted
  • War themes

Ferris by Kate DiCamillo

It’s the summer before fifth grade, and for Ferris Wilkey, it is a summer of sheer pandemonium: Her little sister, Pinky, has vowed to become an outlaw. Uncle Ted has left Aunt Shirley and, to Ferris’s mother’s chagrin, is holed up in the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world. And Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has started seeing a ghost at the threshold of her room, which seems like an alarming omen given that she is also feeling unwell. But the ghost is not there to usher Charisse to the Great Beyond. Rather, she has other plans—wild, impractical, illuminating… Read more,

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Grandparent with a heart condition
  • Death of a grandmother

Dirrarn by Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler

We first met Mia in Black Cockatoo, as she navigated her way through culture, Country and familial ties. Dirrarn follows Mia as she finds herself at boarding school and the challenges of living thousands of kilometres away from home, family, and the big sky country she loves. Mia along with her best friend, Naya, negotiate new friends, new ways of thinking and new ways of being in a different world. As Mia wrestles with all that is unfamiliar, she soon must learn to stand in her truth when confronted with unending challenges.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Bullying

Black Cockatoo by Carl Merrison and Hakea Hustler

Mia is a 13-year-old girl from a remote community in the Kimberley. She is saddened by the loss of her brother as he distances himself from the family. She feels powerless to change the things she sees around her, until one day she rescues her totem animal, the dirran black cockatoo, and soon discovers her own inner strength.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Graphic animal death & cruelty