Like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity and dies.
Ray Bradbury
Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe (Random House Books for Young Readers, 2018) by Jo Watson Hackl is very compelling. I missed this book when it first came out but am so glad to have read it now. Such voice! So fun to follow the clues along with the character. And who doesn’t love a secret room!
Her mama has run off and Cricket thinks finding the secret room that an artist painted will help bring Mama back. But Cricket too has to run away to search…to a ghost town. This girl’s only companion in the wilds is a live cricket. And Cricket has a deadline to solve the mystery that everyone else says isn’t real.
The book has won the following awards: 2020 Mississippi Library Association Children’s Author Award, 2019 Southern Book Award Winner–Children’s Category, and was a 2020-2021 Young Hoosier Book Award Nominee.
Read about Jo here. And if you like, check out the book trailer here.
Learning not to drown.
Learning not to drown. (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014) by Anna Shinoda is such a spooky good read. Gripping. Puzzling. Moving. Hard to put down.
You know right away that something bad has happened, but not what. The book is divided into THEN chapters and NOW chapters.
Seventeen-year-old Clare has let her memories of THEN cloud over and NOW she’s working on focusing on the good memories. But there’s a thing about skeletons in the closet–they won’t stay there.
I don’t want to say too much about this story of a great girl in a dysfunctional family, but her mother made me so angry.
The book was translated into German and received a German Academy of Literature for Children and Young Readers) Book of the Month Award in 2015. Anna doesn’t seem to be active on her website, but you can check it out here. (That may be because she’s married to musician/singer Mike Shinoda.)
I love writing that is honest, clear, passionate. I love a book that takes me to a place of mind and heart that I did not know before I read it.
Katherine Paterson
I love writing that is
That Smudge of Smoke
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
That Smudge of Smoke (Bealu Books, October 1, 2023*) by Edith M. Hemingway is such a good historical read. This story connects two different time periods, 1929 and 2015–via a diary hidden in a door salvaged from an old Chesapeake Bay steamboat–and two twelve-year-olds dealing with life changes.
In 1929, Penelope Sinclair (Piper) has tragically lost her mother and has to go live aboard the steamboat, S.S. City of Atlanta, with her father, the busy captain of the ship. Her teacher gives her the diary to encourage her to keep writing. We get to be with Piper through all her grief and experiences on board until there’s a collision with another steamer.
Eighty-six years later, we pick up with Garrett Stevens, whose injured Army Sergeant dad is in a coma. Garrett and his mother have had to move in with his grandparents. When Garrett slams a door in anger, a panel pops off and there’s the hidden diary. Somehow, reading Piper’s experiences helps him through his own.
The story shares events and books from Piper’s life in 1929 as well. The salvaged door from an old Chesapeake Bay steamboat is real, which is very cool in itself. Plus, this book gives readers hope.
You can check out the author’s other books here and read about her and the real door here.
(*I got to read an arc–the book is officially out next week.)