Here’s a list of 2024 middle grade fiction books that I’ve read or partially read and do NOT recommend, for various reasons, mostly because they contain gratuitous and unhelpful sexual references, lies about gender and sexuality, crude language and/or just bad writing:
Shark Teeth by Sherri Winston
The Secret Library by Kekla Magoon
A Game of Noctis by Deva Fagan
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
Unstuck by Barbara Dee
Keep It Like a Secret by John David Anderson
The Wrong Way Home by Kate O’Shaughnessy
The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown by Elizabeth Laird
Jamie by L.D. Lapinski
Gooseberry by Robin Gow
Linus and Etta Could Use a Win by Caroline Huntoon
What would it be like to grow up with a conman for a father? A conman who swindles your friends’ families out of large sums of money and convinces you that it’s all just part of “the family business”?
In Faker, Gordon Korman, a prolific middle-grade novelist, explores this intriguing premise through the eyes of Trey, a young boy who has been hustling people with his dad and younger sister for as long as he can remember. The family moves from town to town, conning wealthy people out of their money, and then disappearing when the heat gets too intense. As soon as things start to unravel, Trey’s dad calls a “Houdini”—a quick escape—and they vanish, only to reappear later in a new place with a new scheme.
Despite the fact that this is a story about a family of criminals, Korman does a good job of showing that Trey is more than just a product of his environment. As the story progresses, Trey begins to question the rationale his father has always fed him about their lifestyle, grappling with his maturing conscience. I also appreciated that Trey’s father, while clearly a thief, isn’t painted as entirely villainous. He’s a complex character: a criminal with a good heart. In fact, he might be a bit too good a dad to feel entirely believable, but this adds to the book’s emotional appeal.
As I read, I found myself thinking, “This is not going to end well,” especially when Trey’s dad uses him and his sister to establish relationships with the wealthy parents of their schoolmates. But Korman manages to craft a surprisingly hopeful conclusion, one that, while somewhat improbable, avoids the darker turn the story might have taken. While the book offers some redemption and resolution, the narrative doesn’t shy away from difficult questions about right and wrong. Trey may come to understand the ethics of his actions, but his father’s repentance and reformation remain more ambiguous.
If you’re looking for a squeaky-clean story with no lying, stealing, or moral dilemmas, Faker is not the book for you. However, if you’re looking for a thought-provoking story that raises important questions about ethics, theft, and deception, this is a great choice. The book offers an opportunity to discuss complex topics like whether it’s okay to steal from the rich, the nature of heroes and villains, and whether criminals deceive themselves about their own motives. Pairing Faker with a version of the Robin Hood stories would make for some excellent discussions about the ethics of stealing from the rich and living outside the law.
I came across a critique of this story about an eleven-year-old girl, Essie, who has been raised by four librarian mothers in a public library. The critic argued that the story wasn’t believable. Well, of course it’s not. This isn’t a realistic, middle-grade problem novel; it’s a whimsical and exaggerated fairy tale with some real truths mixed in.
“Essie has grown up in the public library, raised in secret by the four librarians who found her abandoned as a baby in the children’s department. With four mothers and miles of books to read, Essie has always been very happy living there.”
Now that she’s eleven, her mothers decide it’s time for Essie to experience the world outside the library and gain some independence. They give her a Saturday allowance (like in The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright) and set boundaries for her exploration. But as Essie makes new friends—possibly enemies, too—including a boy named G.E., she begins to uncover surprising truths about herself and her past.
This book is a mixed bag. I enjoyed the references to children’s literature throughout; they were a fun touch. However, some of the books Essie reads or hears about, like Slaughterhouse-Five, are wildly inappropriate for an eleven-year-old. There’s a recurring theme of the freedom to read without censorship, which is one of the more realistic aspects of the story, especially given today’s library culture.
The narrative is generally clean, though there are a couple of instances where God’s name is taken in vain, which were unnecessary and spoiled the tone. That said, the story remains relatively wholesome. There’s a fair amount of deception and secrecy, but ultimately, the truth comes out. It’s amusing to watch Essie navigate the world of candy shops, novelty stores, and department stores when she’s never really experienced them firsthand, having only read about them in books.
And what about those “real truths”? After some misunderstandings and a bit of trauma, the characters do reach a happy ending—more or less. There are consequences to the characters’ bad and foolish choices, but the consequences are not too severe. Even the villain, Mrs. Matterhorn, the legalistic librarian who wants to kick Essie out of the library, finds her own place in a library that suits her better.
But this is also a story about how real life isn’t like a story. Not all characters undergo perfect transformations. The past can’t be changed, and the poor choices of the past do affect the present. Some characters remain flawed, and not every problem is neatly resolved. In the end, the story acknowledges that life is messy, and sometimes, the answers we seek aren’t so clear-cut, even after everything is revealed.
Published in 1964. Biographical novelist Elisabeth Kyle published two books in 1964: Girl With a Pen: Charlotte Brontë, which I read and reviewed earlier this year, and this novel about the life of nineteenth century singer and celebrity Jenny Lind. Kyle also wrote several other “biographical novels,” including works about Joan of Arc, Mary Stuart, Mary of Orange, Queen Victoria, Clara and Robert Schumann, Edvard and Nina Grieg, and Charles Dickens, as well as numerous regular novels for both adults and children. If anyone has read any of her other books, I’d love to hear your thoughts. These two that I read were quite engaging and would be well-suited for voracious teen readers looking for clean, absorbing stories about real people.
As for Jenny Lind, the movie The Greatest Showman did her a great disservice. If she were still alive, I would advise her to sue for defamation of character. The real Jenny Lind was a deeply devout Christian who would never have tried to seduce P.T. Barnum, as the film implied. She was known for her “golden voice” by all who heard her sing, and she was a celebrity in the modern sense—hounded by fans and people eager to exploit her talent, including Barnum himself. Over the course of her career, Jenny Lind made a significant amount of money, most of which she generously gave away to family and charity.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Kyle’s biography of Jenny Lind. In this portrayal, Jenny is depicted as strong-willed (her friends even use reverse psychology to guide her decisions), yet also kind and generous. Her childhood was tumultuous, with parents who were both neglectful and overbearing , yet after her career takes off, Jenny supports them by buying them a house. Though she initially resists leaving Sweden, she eventually travels to France for singing lessons, and later performs in England and America, including on the famous P.T. Barnum tour.
Jenny Lind herself was a fascinating mix of contradictions: talented yet shy, a child prodigy who almost lost her ability to sing in her early twenties, confident on stage but plagued by stage fright before every performance. She was plain in appearance but transformed by her voice into a beautiful star who attracted numerous admirers, including Hans Christian Andersen and Felix Mendelssohn. Over time, she reconciled all of these contradictions, eventually giving up her singing career to marry and settle in England with her husband and children.
Though Kyle only briefly mentions it, Jenny’s strong Christian faith seemed to be a key factor in preventing her from becoming a spoiled diva. It’s a shame the filmmakers behind The Greatest Showman either didn’t see—or chose to ignore—this aspect of Jenny Lind’s life and character. Jenny Bicks, one of the screenwriters for The Greatest Showman (and a writer for Sex and the City), was likely part of the reason the film’s portrayal of Jenny Lind strayed so far from reality.
In any case, Elisabeth Kyle does a much more faithful job of novelizing Jenny Lind’s story. I wonder how she would have portrayed P.T. Barnum if she had written a book about him?
New in 2024, Rosa By Starlight is a modern day fairy tale about an orphan girl, Rosa Mundi, and a magical cat, Balthazar, and couple of wicked villains, Rosa’s aunt and uncle who become her guardians. About 150 pages long, the book incudes a trip to Venice and a flight through the stars on the back of a winged lion. As it should be, the good are rewarded, and the evil characters get their just desserts as well.
The book reminded me of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess because poor little orphaned Rosa lives in a room at the back of the house in England while her aunt and uncle scheme to make a fortune selling fake grass. And later on in Venice Rosa is consigned to a garret room and left alone to fend for herself. But the Venetian part of the story becomes more and more magical as Rosa explores the sights and canals of Venice while trying to find refuge from her terrible, murderous guardians.
As with any good fairy tale, there are questions left unanswered in the story. What happened to Rosa’s apple seeds? Did they grow through the artificial turf to become trees? Are Rosa’s aunt and uncle really related to her? Why does the word “stop” become Rosa’s magic word? How is the cat Balthazar so wealthy with servants and gourmet cat menu of food and treats? How does the magic work, and what will make it stop and start when it needs to? And finally, the question at the heart of it all: how can one escape the evil schemes of men and come home at last? For Rosa, it’s a process and a journey, and she does indeed find a real home at last.
The magnificent white Lipizzan stallions, bred for hundreds of years to dance and delight emperors and kings, captivated Marguerite Henry when she saw them perform in the Spanish Court Riding School in Vienna.
Now she makes this unique spectacle the focal point in her story of Borina, one of the most famous stallions of this famous breed. It was Borina who, at the height of his career, took a fling in the Viennese grand opera. And it was Borina who, as a mature school stallion, helped train young apprentices riders, and thus became known as the Four-footed Professor.
What a delightful story that could lead to any number of delight-directed studies and pursuits! After reading about Hans, the baker’s boy, and his overwhelming desire to become a Riding Master, to ride the famous Lipizzaner stallions at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria, I was impelled to look up and read more about the Lipizzaners and the school and the history of these horses who entertained the elite society of Vienna. I also became curious about Xenophon and his book The Art of Horsemanship, the earliest known work on the horse and his care. And I developed a bit of an urge to visit Vienna and see the castles and statues and maybe even the Lipizzaner stallions that still perform their acrobatics in Vienna and across the world in dressage shows and competitions.
I also discovered that Disney made a movie about the Lipizzaners called Miracle of the White Stallions. The movie is not based on Marguerite Henry’s book, but rather it tells the story of how during World War II the U.S. Army under General Patton rescued the Lipizzans and other valuable horses that the Nazis had moved to Czechoslovakia at the beginning of the war. Of course, that movie, as well as a 1940 film called Florian, also about Lipizzaners, is another rabbit trail for me to follow up on, soon.
Getting back to the book, the illustrations by Wesley Dennis are a treat in themselves, both the tiny black-and-white pictures that adorn the margins of each page of the book as well as the full color one and two page spreads the show up periodically. These beautiful drawings and paintings should speak to both horse lovers and artists and draw them into the story alongside the text.
Ms. Henry’s story takes place in the early 1900’s, about the time the horse and cart were giving way to the motorized vehicle. Hans has a horse named Rosy and a cart to make bakery deliveries, and he always stops to watch the Lipizzaners come out of their stable to walk to the riding school in the early morning. (Later in the story, Hans’ bakery gets a truck to make deliveries.) Hans is fascinated with beauty and skill of the Lipizzaner stallions, and his nearly impossible dream is to someday be rider who partners with these magnificent horses to bring that beauty to the people who come to watch the performance at the Imperial Palace. Hans’ journey toward that dream is a series of miracles and disappointments that require initiative and perseverance on his part until at last he succeeds in learning the lessons that Borina, the most famous of Lipizzaner stallions, has to teach.
The “moral” of the story is embedded in the text, as Colonel Podhajsky tells his apprentice riders:
“Here in the Spanish Reitschule . . . the great art of classical riding is brought to its highest perfection. This art is a two-thousand-year-old heritage which has come down to us from Greece, Spain, Italy, and of course, France. . . Our Reitschule is a tiny candle in the big world. Our duty, our privilege is to keep it burning. Surely, if we can send out one beam of splendor, of glory, of elegance into this torn and troubled world . . . that would be worth a man’s life, no?”
I am not a horsewoman or a performer, but that quote speaks to me. It reminds me of what I hope my library can be: a beam of splendor, of glory, of elegance in this torn and troubled world. What a lovely thought that can be applied to anything good, and true, and beautiful that God has called us to do, not matter how seemingly small and insignificant.
Both books are about art and artists and the Christian life. Both books are accessible and enjoyable to art lovers and philistines (like me), to Christians and to unbelievers. I would call these chapters “sermons in art”–Mr. Ramsey is, after all, a pastor– but that might give those who are not fond of sermons reason to skip the book. That would be a mistake.
What Russ Ramsey offers up in these two books, but especially in this second volume, is a compassionate and broad vision for what art can show us about how to live our our lives through times of joy and wonder as well as through periods of suffering and injustice. The chapters in Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart tell stories about the artists Gustave Dore, Leonardo DaVinci, Rembrandt, Artemisia Gentileschi, Joseph Turner, the artists of the Hudson River School, Norman Rockwell, Paul Gauguin, Norman Rockwell, Edgar Degas, Jimmy Abegg, and others. Each artist’s story illustrates some aspect of life’s journey and some way of seeing that life that is found in the art of those who sacrificed something for the art’s sake.
Charlotte Mason educators talk a lot about “narration”, a practice of telling back what the student sees in a painting or reads in a book or hears in a well told story. These books seem to me to be Russ Ramsey’s narrations of the paintings and the artists’ lives that have taught him to see certain ideas and stories in a new light, that have clarified concepts, both theological and philosophical, for him as he studies the art and artists that have spoken truth into his life.
The books are also just a gentle introduction to and invitation into the world of fine art. Art doesn’t have to intimidating and elitist. It’s for everyone. The appendices to the book are invaluable in this regard. In Appendix 1, I Don’t Like Donatello, and You Can Too, Mr. Ramsey explains what we can do when we “don’t like a work of art or an artist or even an entire style of art.” In short, it’s fine to have a personal taste in art, but it might surprise you to try to figure out why and how to appreciate even that which you don’t much like. Appendix 2 is a Beginner’s Guide to Symbols in Art, also quite helpful. Appendix 3 is a list of Lost, Stolen, and Recovered Art, some selected, famous works of art that have been stolen over the years. (Maybe you’ll find one of these in your attic?) There are also color pictures of some of the artworks featured in the book in a center section.
Recommended for older teens and adults. The two books, Rembrandt Is in the Wind and Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, by Russ Ramsey are available for checkout from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.
Beneath the Swirling Sky by Carolyn Leiloglou. Illustrated by Vivienne To.
Between Flowers and Bones by Carolyn Leiloglou. Illustrated by Vivienne To.
I read Beneath the Swirling Sky last year when it came out—and failed to write a review. Now, I just finished the second book in what is slated to be a trilogy, and I must say that that this series, already pretty good in the first installment, just got better in the sequel. Reading Between Flowers and Bones was an immersion experience, just like stepping into a book (or a painting).
That’s a not-so-subtle nod to what happens in these stories. In Beneath the Swirling Sky, Vincent is visiting his great uncle Leo in Texas. Vincent’s parents believe that if Vincent gets a taste of all of the art that Uncle Leo, an art restorer, has in his home, Vincent will start making art again. But Vincent never wants to look at a paintbrush again.
However, Vincent’s homeschooled cousin, Georgia, and his little sister Lili, are also staying with Leo, and when Vincent actually falls into a painting and Lili gets kidnapped . . . well, Vincent’s gift for art and artistry along with Georgia’s navigational skills are the only way to save Lili. And so Vincent becomes a Restorationist.
Between Flowers and Bones focuses on Georgia and her envy of the gifts of others to the detriment of her own gift as a Restorationist Navigator. Can Georgia and Vincent become a team, or will Georgia’s jealousy and Vincent’s headaches keep them from saving and restoring and even making great art? Just as the first book featured the work of Vincent Van Gogh, but also a lot of other artworks by a multitude of artists, this second one features Georgia O’Keefe along with many other artists in an exciting art adventure.
It looks if the third book in the trilogy will feature yet another child, and probably another artist, as the central characters in the book. The ending in Between Flowers and Bones is somewhat satisfying, but also a bit of a cliffhanger, which is always not my favorite kind of ending. But I can deal with it. At least the story does have a good arc, and it was all engaging enough for me to want to come back for more.
Ms. Leiloglou is a homeschool mom, the granddaughter of art collectors, and the daughter of an art teacher. So all of the art and the inclusion of a homeschooled character in the boos is no accident. Indeed, it’s obvious that writing these books required a lot of research and a lot time spent in art museums and artists’ studios. All of the artists and paintings that are mentioned in the books are an invitation to view their work, and I was intrigued enough to look up some of them online. Surely art-inclined readers will be drawn to do the same.
The Restorationists series embodies middle grade fantasy quest fiction at its best, and I recommend it–if you don’t mind that the story is somewhat incomplete. Or you could wait for the third book–maybe, next year?
This 2024 middle grade fiction book reminded me of another book I read a couple of years ago, Out of Range by Heidi Lang. But I liked The Long Way Around even better because the characters were more likable and more supportive of each other. I was also reminded of Lost on a Mountain in Maine by Donn Fendler, a true story of how a 12 year old boy survived for nine days in the Maine wilderness without enough food or proper clothing and made it back to be reunited with his family.
The Long Way Around takes place on the other side of the country in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California and features three cousins–Owen, Vivian, and Amy–who become separated from their parents by an earthquake-caused rockfall. There’s only one way to get back to civilization—the long way around on an “unmaintained” trail that’s barely visible on the map.
As the children hike through many miles of wilderness they encounter earthquake aftershocks, dangerous animals, thunderstorms, and roadblocks that challenge their courage, persistence, and survival skills. Each cousin brings with him or her both strengths and weaknesses that give them reasons and the ability to help one another survive. Vivian, age twelve, is the leader in the group, but she carries with her a fear of heights and of her future in scary middle school. Owen, also twelve, has what sounds like PTSD from a car wreck that he recently survived, but he’s really intelligent and his cooking, math, and map skills are an asset to the team. Amy, Vivian’s little sister, is only eight years old, and she is the most vulnerable of the trio, physically speaking. But Amy also has the best imagination of the bunch and a capacity for hope that keeps them all going.
Survival stories, even fictional ones, are inspiring. They show us that we can draw on strengths we never knew we had until the time comes. In the story, Vivian in particular learns that she can expect to be ready when the challenge comes to face whatever comes at her, to overcome her fears one step at a time.
The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Ciphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candace Fleming.
The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin.
Bletchley Park and the code breakers who lived and worked there during World War II are hot topics these days. Maybe it’s because the whole episode is less “mined” because of all the secrecy that surrounded the work there. Maybe it’s just a fleeting trend. At any rate, there do seem to be a lot of books about Bletchley floating around, but not so many for the younger set. Until now.
These two books, one fiction and one nonfiction, were recently published (2024) and are appropriate for young people about 13 years of age and up. The Enigma Girls tells the story of several teenaged girls who were recruited to work at Bletchley either because of their math skills or their language proficiency. But these girls were not, for the most part, doing the high level code breaking that was the most intriguing and intellectually challenging work going on at Bletchley Park. Rather, they were keeping records on notecards of all of the code words and German double speak that had been decoded. Or they were servicing and keeping the huge “bombes” running. These were the machines that were created to infiltrate and determine the settings for the German Enigma coding machines. Machines (or primitive computers) were fighting machines, and teenagers were keeping the machines moving and computing.
By limiting her story to the females who worked at Bletchley, gifted nonfiction author Candace Fleming risks over-emphasizing and even distorting the role that these women and girls played in the overall mission of breaking and intercepting the Nazi communications. But she doesn’t fall into that trap, and instead as I read I was moved to admire the persistence and hard work of these unsung heroines who toiled in harsh conditions doing work that they were unable to discuss or even understand completely. It wasn’t a romantic, spy-novel kind of job. The “bombes” were huge, oily, and loud, and the girls who tended them knew very little about how they worked or what significance their work might have. And after the war was over, the Enigma Girls were still left in the dark about how their work helped England win the war because they and everyone else who worked with them were bound to secrecy by the Official Secrets Acts that they all had to sign. They only knew that they were needed to “do their part” in defeating Hitler—and they did.
The Bletchley Riddle, although it is “based on the real history of Bletchley Park, Britain’s top-secret World War II codebreaking center,” makes the whole setting and story much more exciting and romantic. (Fiction can do that.) Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin, both well known in YA literature circles, wrote this spy novel together, and the joint authorship shows. It’s a bit disjointed at times, but the two authors do tie up most all of the loose ends by the end of the story. Fourteen year old Lizzie Novis has lost her mother, Willa, a single parent who works for the U.S. Embassy in London. Willa went to Poland to help evacuate tens of U.S. Embassy there in anticipation of the Nazi invasion of Warsaw. And she didn’t come back. Everyone says that Willa is dead, that she most likely died in the invasion. But Lizzie is sure that Willa is still alive, and she’s determined to find her mother no matter what it takes.
I’ll let you read to find out how Lizzie ends up in Bletchley, with several hurried trips back to London. I’ll let you read about Lizzie’s older brother Jakob, and how he becomes the other major character in the story. And finally in the pages of the book, you can meet Lizzie’s new friends, Marion and Colin, and read about a little harmless romance that springs up as they all try to keep up with the irrepressible Lizzie and her quest to find Willa. It’s a book about lying and spying and secret-keeping and persistence in a time and place where all of those qualities, even the dishonesty, are necessary for survival.
But the story never becomes too thoughtful or deep. It’s barely believable that Lizzie can get away with all of the shenanigans that she pulls. And Jakob seems too befuddled to be as intelligent as he’s supposed to be. Maybe he’s a bit of an absent-minded professor at the ripe age of nineteen. Anyway, it’s a lark, but not to be taken seriously. And the minor characters—Alan Turing, Dilly Knox, Gordon Welchman—as well as the setting provide a good introduction to Bletchley Park and its importance to the British war effort and eventual victory.
I recommend both books for those teens who are interested in World War II and Bletchley Park and codes and codebreaking. Oh, both books spend a fair amount time talking about codes and ciphers and Enigma and how it worked and how the Enigma code was broken? Or deciphered? I can never keep the difference straight in my head between codes and ciphers, much decode or decipher anything. But you may have better skills than I do.
