I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.
Sherwood Anderson
Author: Susan Uhlig
The Lost Year
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
The Lost Year (Roaring Brook Press, 2023) by Katherine Marsh is a really good historical about the Holodomor (the Ukraine famine tragedy in the 1930s), and is also set at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic. With Ukraine and Russia and immigration being in the news, this book is very timely. The story is told in multiple points of view.
It’s the pandemic and thirteen-year-old Matthew’s reporter father is in France and can’t come home. All Matthew can do is online school, help Mom with his great grandmother, and not see his friends or go anywhere. When Mom takes away his Switch, she makes him help GG sort out the boxes in her room. It’s not easy going, since GG periodically tells him to “get out,” but as he starts learning family history, secrets are revealed.
We meet three cousins: Nadiya, Mila, and Helen.
This book was inspired by Marsh’s own family history and is a National Book Award Finalist, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the 21st Century, Winner of the Jane Addams, Golden Kite and New York Historical Society Awards and on 28 state lists. I hope you get to read it.
Here’s a video about Katherine’s family. Read about the author here and see her other books here. I’ve read two of her books before and see others I need to read.
While science fiction draws on and extrapolates from what we know about reality and science, fantasy invents what does not (and likely could not) exist in our reality.
Brandi Reissenweber
While science fiction draws
Olivetti
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
Olivetti (Feiwel and Friends, 2024) by Allie Millington is told in two points of view–a twelve-year-old boy named Ernest and a typewritter named Olivetti. In fact, the opening lines are from Olivetti.
“It’s quite possible you’ve never spoken to a typewriter before. This is not your fault.”
How could one not read on?
Olivetti lives with the Brindle family and has been replaced with a laptop. But when Mrs. Brindle leaves the family, only Olivetti has clues and he breaks the typewriter code by typing back to Ernest. With a newfound friend, the two work together to find Beatrice Brindle, until disaster strikes.
This debut book is unusual and compelling. It’s been on the following lists: School Library Journal Best Books of 2024, Booklist Best Books of 2024, Boston Globe Best Books of 2024, Bookshop Best Books of 2024, and more.
Read about the author here. She now has two other books which you can read about here.
Although I like the cover, I don’t think it would appeal to middle grade boys.
Part of the reality behind the myth of an overnight success, is that most people have actually been toiling, laboriously and diligently, in an unseen way, for years.
Jennifer Joel