What's new in middle grade fiction?

I'm finishing up a rotten cold (which gave me laryngitis so bad I missed 3 days of school!).  I feel well enough to read, YAY!  So I was digging around on my Kindle for something new and look what I found!  New middle grade fiction!  So here's what I was reading this weekend.

The first one I actually read over the summer and somehow got shoved to the back of the pile of books on my iPad.  It's was really a fun read.  It's called Sidetracked by Diana Harmon Asher.  It's about Joseph, who lives with his mom and dad and his grandfather and struggles with ADHD.  It makes it difficult for him to focus on anything for any length of time, which people at school find very exasperating.  Joseph is small and skinny which he finds exasperating and keeps hoping to find something he's good at.  Two different things happen fairly close together.  One is, a new and very athletic girl shows up at school.  The second is that Joseph's special education teacher starts to be the cross country coach.  The teacher encourages all her exceptional students to join the cross country team and so Joseph does.  And so does the super athletic girl, who's name is Heather.  Joseph decides to try running and with some help from Heather, starts showing improvement.  She and his teacher encourage him to consider his personal best rather than beating someone else.  What's great about this one is the theme of bullying, that it's not always the skinny little kids who get bullied, sometimes it's just people who are different but you don't have to just keep taking it. This will be a nice one for a middle school or elementary school library.

The second one is called "Someone Else's Shoes" by Elise Wittlinger.  It's about Izzy who is 10 and having a hard time.  Her parents are divorced and her dad is remarried and he and his new wife have a BIG surprise for Izzy.  Her cousin and her uncle are living with Izzy and her mom, her aunt committed suicide and her uncle is so depressed.  Her cousin Oliver is kind of strange so Izzy is hoping to help him.  Her mom is dating a dentist.  The dentist has a son who gets into a lot of trouble and Izzy's friends are acting weird.   Izzy really wants people to notice her, but she keeps choosing some kinds of crazy ways, like buying a pair of shoes that are a little small (they give her blisters) but they are so beautiful!  Or coloring and cutting her hair (by herself).  When her uncle disappears, Oliver and Ben hatch a plan to go and find him and Izzy wants to go to.   I liked this story a lot.  Izzy is an interesting and well developed character and so are the other characters around her.  It has some nice themes of friendship and taking time to get to know people rather than just judging them by appearances and kindness.    This will be another great one for an elementary or middle school library.

The last one is actually an old book originally published in 2008.  It's been refashioned as a new English book (which explains some of the very British vocabulary that pops up occasionally) that is the first one in a series of four books by a well known author-James Dashner.  He's pretty famous for a series of middle grade/YA novels that started with The Maze Runner, which is scary, dystopian future.  This  one is funnier and crazier.  It's a little scary but it's so much fun, I think the kids are really going to like it.  It's called "The 13th Reality Journal of Curious Letters".  It starts off with a guy in a post office in an obscure (and made up) town in Alaska with an unusual man trying to mail a number of letters.  Then a crazy, kind of scary lady all in yellow shows up asking (not very nicely) about the letters.  Then it flashes to a boy named Tick.  Actually his name  is Atticus but has earned the nickname Tick from the local bully, who is pretty relentless in his bullying.  Tick has learned to endure the bullying without too much complaining.  He has a really awesome family, a loving mom, a dangerous little sister, and a really amazing dad.  He receives one of the letters, which explains that he's being invited (mysteriously) to solve some clues and save the world.  It also turns out that other kids are being invited and there are some fantastical people he meets along the way that various try to help or kill him (but not usually both at the same time).  It's a really fun story to read with lots of exciting plot twists.  I'm a little surprised it didn't do better in America but maybe if it does well in England, they'll look to republish it here because it was a good read.  It's probably best for upper elementary or middle school.  

Here's a book trailer for the first book.