Middle Grade Monday: The Moon without Stars by Chanel Miller

Image: Penguin Random House

 

The Moon without Stars by Chanel Miller. 256 p. Philomel Books/ Penguin Young Readers, January, 2026. 9780593624555. Review of finished book borrowed from pubic library. 

Seventh grader Luna is well aware of her outsider status. She might be even comfortable with it. After all, she has her bff, Scott to walk to school and sit with at lunch. They sit under a tree, where Luna observes the interactions of the "popular crowd" with some fascination. 

After she read all the books that she was given by the family of a girl in town who had died, Luna wonders what to do with them. She decides to give them away, but carefully. She becomes a "book doctor," prescribing books for her classmates - a middle school "right book at the right time for the right reader," if you will. Soon, she finds herself in demand for these books and she wonders how she can help more people. So she creates a zine and Scott illustrates it. 

The zine takes off and eventually, Luna catches the eye of the popular crowd. At first, she splits her time between them and Scott, but eventually ditches him altogether; but being in the popular crowd has its price and as the stakes grow, Luna is unsure of her place in it.

This was such a spot-on depiction of middle school friendship dynamics. I loved Luna's voice. I loved her friendship with Scott and ached for him when she ditched him for the popular crowd. Middle school readers will find much to relate with in this engaging, heartfelt story. I picked it up after reading some Newbery buzz about it. The buzz is well-deserved. 

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi

Image: Penguin Random House

Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~7 hours. Read by Mitra Jouhari. Listening Library/ Penguin Random House Audio, May, 2021. 9780593411483. (Review of e-audio downloaded from public library.)

Teen Tuesday features Perfectly Parvin by Olivia Abtahi. This breezy first-person narrative features fourteen-year-old Parvin (pronounced Par-VEEN, not Par-vin) Mohammedi, who is starting high school thinking she will rock it and is crushed when her new boyfriend dumps her at orientation because she's "too much." What does that even mean? Luckily, she has two bffs to turn to for comfort and she video chats with her college-aged aunt in Tehran, Iran regularly and her parents are supportive even if they do work long hours and don't cook much. When she spies her ex holding hands with another girl, she blurts out that she has a date for homecoming. Now all she needs to do is tone herself down and emulate all the white girls in her favorite rom-coms-be quiet and demure, not hairy and no snort-laughing. oh, yeah, and snag a date for homecoming so she can save face.

Her friends Fabian and Ruth and her aunt all tell her not to change herself-that she should be liked for who she is, but Parvin is wrestling with being bi-racial. She looks nothing like her blond, blue-eyed mother and doesn't feel Iranian enough, especially in Farsi school, where she struggles to learn the language.

Parvin is perfectly entertaining as she blunders her way through a variety of cringeworthy, yet relatable situations. Layered inside the humor are her deft observations of Islamophobia, micro-aggressions and outright racism as well as the shifting sands of high school hierarchy.

Perfectly Parvin is the author's debut and a series starter, so if you like rom-coms and irrepressible characters, you're in for a treat here. I read this one with my ears and appreciated the fluency of the narrator when pronouncing Farsi. Happy reading!

Middle Grade Monday: City of Dragons: the Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis and Vivian Truong

Image: Scholastic Inc.

City of Dragons: the Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis and illustrated by Vivian Truong. City of Dragons #1. 240 p. Graphix/ Scholastic Inc., September, 2021. 9781338660425. (Review of a finished ppb courtesy of publisher.)

Happy Monday! The dogs and I survived the bomb cyclone. Well it kind of bombed in my area. We only got 5 inches and it sure was cold!  Son #1 is south Jersey got 9 or 10 inches. Son #4 in the Boston area got over a foot. Yesterday was such a sparkly winter day though! We went out often for short periods due to the cold, but they love the snow. 

Middle Grade Monday features a graphic novel series starter called City of Dragons: the Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis and illustrated by Vivian Truong. Grace is bi-racial. Her Chinese father died three years earlier and her white mother has recently remarried. They are set to move to Hong Kong, where her step-father works for a tech company. She is about to attend an international school. She's fine with all that. She even looks forward to the challenge.

She's given a challenge she never expected on a field trip. An elderly woman hands her an egg. Shortly afterward, it hatches and it's a dragon! She soon learns it's very difficult to keep a baby dragon a secret. She's also well-versed in Chinese mythology thanks to her father and grandfather and knows she must keep the dragon safe. Sure enough, there are beings both human and magical that are after the dragon, and, maybe, even Grace.

The energy of the palette as well as the varied panel layout add to an already cinematic plot and keeps the pace fast. Grace and her diverse group of friends are likable and that baby dragon is a hoot. Your graphic novel fans will gobble this one up and pant for the next installment!

Arc Review: What Lane? by Torrey Maldonado

Image: Penguin Random House

What Lane? by Torrey Maldonado. 138 p. Nancy Paulson Books/ Penguin Random House, May 5, 2020. 9780525518433. (Review of arc courtesy of publisher.)

Sixth grader Stephen's friendship with his best bud, Dan is changing. Ever since Dan's cousin, Chad, moved to the neighborhood, Chad has done nothing but challenge and contradict Stephen. He has even gone so far to say that "They shoulda kept Spider-Man white." Stephen is biracial and Dan is white. Now Chad's casual racism and constant micro-aggressions are getting under Stephen's skin. He and his dad are close and have lots of heart-to-heart conversations about race, racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement. As Chad escalates his dares to do things such as trespassing or riding the top of a subway car, Stephen realizes that he will not be treated the same as his white friends if they are caught. 

Mr. Maldonado, a teacher born and raised in Brooklyn, vividly portrays the uncertainty of a young, bright boy navigating race in an unfair society. I love everything about this book from its cover through its short, tightly written chapters. I love the tween boy dynamics and that Stephen's parents were so in tuned-in and involved. The author lays out the issues, including white ally-ship in a thoughtful accessible way for tween readers and some clueless adults who may need to understand their white privilege. 

What Lane? belongs in all library collections.

Teen Tuesday and Audiobook Review: The Patron Saint of Nothing by Randy Ribay

Image: Penguin Random House

The Patron Saint of Nothing by Randy Ribay. Unabridged e-audiobook, ~ 8 hours. Read by Ramón de Ocampo. Listening Library, 2019. (Review of e-audiobook downloaded from public library.)

Teen Tuesday features Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay. Jay Reguero is a bit at sea. He is a high school senior in Michigan and has been accepted to University of Michigan, but none of his preferred schools. He's not sure what he wants to study. Then he receives news that his cousin, Jun, died in the Philippines. HIs Filipino father is his usual terse self when Jay asked what happened. His white mother explains later that Jun was using drugs and was murdered because President Duterte's answer to the drug problem in the Philippines is to kill users and dealers without remorse. This wasn't the Jun that Jay came to admire when the family visited some years earlier. They felt like brothers and communicated via letters for years until Jay abruptly stopped writing. Now Jay wants to extend his spring break to travel to Manila to find out the truth. 

Part mystery, part coming-of-age story and totally intriguing, mature teen readers will explore what it means to belong to a culture, and learn about the brutal policies of a President with zero tolerance for drug use and citizens who speak out against his policies. Patron Saints of Nothing was a National Book Award Finalist. 

Middle Grade Monday and arc review: Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Image: LBYR

Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes. 234 p. Little, Brown and Company, March, 2020. 9780316493802. (Review of arc courtesy of publisher, ALAMW)

Middle Grade Monday features Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Donte acknowledges his privilege. He lives with two loving parents in a nice house, in a nice town. He actually likes his parents. They can afford to send him to a private school to get the best possible education. Still, he would prefer to be back in his old neighborhood in New York City because, as one of few black students at Middlefield Prep, he experiences outright racism and micro-aggressions daily. According to his teachers, he is just not fitting in. Not like his brother, Trey. Trey fits in. While both boys are biracial, Trey's skin color favors their's dad and Donte's favors their mom. 

When Donte gets arrested and suspended from school, he's in a bad head space despite the support and love of his family. He wants to get back at his main tormenter. But how? He has to do it in a way that won't get him in trouble. Donte decides on the fencing mat. Alan is captain of the fencing team. Does Donte have the stuff?

Jewell Parker Rhodes delivers another solid, engaging middle grade story that deftly presents a myriad of issues without feeling issue-laden. And she does so in just over 200 pages! I was fully invested and taken by Donte's voice from page one and read it in one sitting. I would love to reread this with my ears if there are plans for an audiobook. I am also eager to see the finished copy and its art. Terrific read! I can't wait to share this with my students who are fans of hers. 

Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: Blended by Sharon Draper

Blended by Sharon Draper. Unabridged downloadable audiobook. 5 hours. Narrated by the author. Simon & Schuster Audio, 2018. 9781508258780. (Review of e-audio downloaded from public library. Own hc.) 

Middle Grade Monday features Blended by Sharon Draper. Eleven year old Isabella is a piano prodigy. She loves her piano and is preparing for a concert. What she doesn't love is her parents divorce. It hasn't helped their arguing. She splits her time evenly between her black father's expensive home and her white mother's more modest home. Each have a partner and when they both decide to marry on the same day, fireworks erupt. 

Isabella's first-person narration is often humorous and always spot-on. She yearns to fit in but doesn't know where. She loves both her parents and their partners. But she can't stand that she doesn't look like she belongs with either of them and she especially doesn't like the prying questions.

One can bet that a new Draper book will tackle tough issues head-on. Blended has a few and they are done well. Her father is the one in the large house. Her mom is solidly working class. She plays on a Casio portable piano at her mom's house; but she loves that as much as the more expensive piano at her dad's. The near tragedy at the end of the story is appropriately middle grade yet still hammers home the scariness of racial profiling.

As narrator of her own work, she's able. I'm sure she did a great read aloud when she was an LA teacher. This felt like that - a read aloud and not a performance. Isabella is eleven. There are some narrators out there that sound eleven. This makes for a better audiobook. That said, she didn't decimate her work, which is what some authors do.

Between that gorgeous cover and the fact that it's a new Draper, Blended will not sit on your shelf.

Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick

181 p. Blue Sky Press/ Scholastic, February 25, 2014. 9780545633475. (Arc obtained at Scholastic Preview)

Twelve-year-old Zane Dupree is quite happy living with his mom in New Hampshire and doesn't even miss his dad, thank you very much. He died in an accident before Zane was born. "You can't miss somebody you never knew, can you?" So he's a bit chagrined at having to travel to Smellyville, aka New Orleans at the end of August, 2005 to meet his paternal great-grandmother. His mom, who knew little to nothing about his dad's childhood, has been searching for his family all these years and finally found Trissy, who raised Zane's dad. 

Zane won't go without Bandit, his beloved mutt. His mom relents and the two take off for New Orleans. Zane warms to Trissy but when he learns he had an uncle who, "got hissef killed," and nothing when he asks why his dad ran away from home, Zane also learns that when Trissy doesn't want to talk about something, she usually changes the subject. With ice cream.

When Hurricane Katrina bears down on the Gulf and the flight Zane's mom arranged for him and Trissy is canceled, Trissy's pastor arranges for them to be evacuated in the church van. He's not happy about including Bandit though. Unfortunately, Bandit bolts and Zane takes off after him. The dog leads Zane back to Trissy's house where the two hunker down for the duration.

And that's when the tension ratchets up. The descriptions of the storm are so vivid and terrifying.

     "A gust slams into the side of the house, rattling the    
     windows. Bandy hunkers down on his tummy, whimpering. 
     obviously scared of hurricanes. Smart dog.

        The storm gets stronger and stronger, until the house 
     whimpers, too." (36)

I found myself gripping the book when Zane describes the flooding that occurred when the levees broke following the storm. That wasn't the last time, nor was I immune to reading ahead when the suspense got too great. Zane is a terrific character who, while articulate, sounds like a kid. Malvina and Tru are compelling characters as well. I was so caught up caring for these three and Bandit that I didn't stop to question any coincidences. 

The author does a lot in 180 pages. Short chapters and the nearly constant tension and danger will keep even the most reluctant of readers engaged and flipping pages. I love the cover and the water-stained pages were a nice design touch. This is one I can't wait to put on the shelves. I will be booktalking this like crazy.