I love middle grade reads, so this is my longest list this year. In no particular order, here are the books to which I gave a five-star rating in 2020.
This is a book for keeps.
More often than not, in India, books that address homosexuality are categorised as young adult or adult books, but with this book more than any others before, I disagree. To Night Owl from Dogfish is clearly a middle grade book. The characters, the themes, the tone – everything, for me, is middle grade.
Avery and Bett learn that their dads are going to get married, and they start exchanging emails, laying plans to ensure that they don’t get to know each other. They don’t want two families to become one, thank you very much. They don’t want to become sisters.
Their fathers want to send them to summer camp together. They want to refuse to go and when that fails, they determine not to talk to each other. Not to become friends.
A hilarious, lovely, heartwarming book, To Night Owl from Dogfish is about friendship, family, love, and the choices we make.
Is it just me or is the cover of Out of My Mind simply not as wonderful as the book?
Melody has a photographic memory. She’s smart, smarter than nearly anyone else you would meet. But with cerebral palsy, she can’t speak, and that means that most people assume she understands nothing. But Melody is determined not to be defined by cerebral palsy. She knows she’s smart, and with the help of a wonderful neighbour, she’s determined to prove it. However much people try to exclude her, she will find her place and do her best to hold on to it.
Number the Stars is a classic war story, and I’m surprised I didn’t come across it earlier. Set in Denmark during the second world war, it’s the story of a young girl who discovers courage when she most needs it. It’s an early middle grade novel, one that tells a very human story of a pair of friends at a time when friendships everywhere are being put to the test.
With short chapters and a simple storytelling style, this early middle grade book is a wonderful introduction to historical fiction for young readers.
What is it like to be the outsider trying to fit in? And then, what is it like to be the outsider who knows she will never fit in and attempting to do so is just not worth the bother?
The Misfits kept me turning pages, eager to find out what would happen next. It’s about a pair of girls who are misfits in very different ways. Chloe is white-skinned, a foreigner, American. Lakshmi is poor, one of the students admitted under the Right to Education act. Chloe and Lakshmi start hanging out together, but only after school because Chloe knows that Lakshmi isn’t really part of the cool gang. Ultimately, however, she’s forced to question how much she’s willing to sacrifice to fit in with the rest of the class.
I had a sheltered childhood, where I didn’t quite understand why India-Pakistan matches were such a big deal. I had cousins who rooted for India with such gusto that it felt that all hell would break loose if Pakistan won the match. This was incomprehensible to me, yet I knew that lots of people were like my cousins.
But cultural baggage was something that became real to me only when I was much older, and Across the Line is about this cultural baggage as much as it is about the partition. How do we forgive and move on? On the other hand, is it really easier to hold a grudge?
Ah, Katherine Rundell. Each book of hers that I’ve read has been lovely.
When I read the title and looked at the cover, I already knew what the book would be about – a group of children who are ‘good’ thieves, either Robin Hood style or in terms of the idea that they’re stealing what they believe is rightfully theirs. And yes, it’s the second of these. Except that I imagined that the children wanted to steal something from the castle, when actually, they want to steal back the castle itself.
Full of adventure and action, The Good Thieves is another book about the power of friendship and family.
What happens to a child who’s imprisoned in a dark cellar for months on end? What would that do to his mind?
Castor has been locked up for five years. To cope without a real family, his mind conjures one up for him: a Family that lives in his head. The Family argues sometimes, but it is all Castor has got. Or so he thinks.
A grand work of historical fiction set against the backdrop of Victorian England, All of Me is packed with adventure, mystery and the quest for truth.
Does one even have the right to review a book by someone like Michael Morpurgo? I have no idea how many books of his I’ve read, and I know that there are several I haven’t. When I sit down with a Morpurgo, I know I’m going to be drawn into an emotional, powerful story.
Listen to the Moon is also a war story, and it addresses the idea of how cultural hatred is born. When Lucy is discovered with a blanket bearing the name Wilhelm, everyone is suspicious. What if she’s German? What if she’s the awful enemy?
Fierce Mary doesn’t care if she’s German. To her, Lucy is a lost girl who needs kindness and love. At every turn, though, it seems as if these two things are exactly what Lucy will be denied.
As is always the case with Morpurgo, the book filled me with a sense of empathy, trust and optimism.
Eva Ibbotson is another writer I love, and much more than her early middle grade fiction, I enjoy her late middle grade/young adult works. The Star of Kazan is one of those and it’s another book based on the timeless themes of family and friendship, reminding me of how much I treasure these themes.
Annika dreams of being discovered by her biological mother and whisked away into a wonderful world full of love. It is not that she does not love her adoptive mother and her adoptive aunt, but there’s nothing quite like discovering that you weren’t an unwanted baby, abandoned to the mercy of strangers, is there?
But what is loyalty? And to whom should Annika be loyal? Her mother who comes back to her, or her adoptive family who were always there for her?
A Bonus Not-Quite Middle Grade Book
And yet again, I gave in to the temptation of adding one last book to my list, a gem of a book that came my way at exactly the right time. I had just launched my online creative writing programme, when I learned about this book and bought it immediately.
Over and over again, right through the book, I found myself agreeing and nodding emphatically. As a writer and a teacher of creative writing, it is a wonderful handbook, perfect in the way it consistently reminds me of things I know but am all too willing to ignore!
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