Middle grade fiction about courage

This week I read two books that are SO different from one another and yet both have big theme of courage.

The first one is called "Storm Runner" by Jennifer Cervantes.  It's part of a series called 'Rick Riordan presents!'  that have titles by different authors, including Cervantes, Yoon Ha Lee, and Roshani Chokshi.  "Storm Runner" is the first in a series about a boy named Zane who lives with his mom and his mom's brother, Hondo.  They also have a dog that Zane is very attached to named Rosie.  Their house has a volcano in the backyard where Zane likes to go exploring.  Zane has one leg that is shorter than the other, so he gets bullied a lot.  Zane's mom has been working hard to get him into a different school, which Zane does not think will help with the bullying.  In fact, when he starts the new school, he gets into trouble almost right away.  When he gets sent to the principal's office, he's surprised that a very beautiful girl wants to talk to him.  They arrange to meet after school and it turns out she has magical powers and can shape shift into a hawk.  She tells him that he's destined to release an evil Aztec god, unless she can remove it first.  That starts the adventure, and much like Riordan's other works, there are scary creatures, mythology references (in this case, Aztec), dangerous decisions  and breathtaking action.  I love the idea that this one references Central American and Mexican folklore, which, up until now, has been ignored in many American books for kids.  It was a very fun and exciting read and an excellent addition to giant collection of works in this genre.  It's going to be best for the upper end of middle grade fiction-I would guess 5th grade and up.

The second one has been getting a lot of buzz in my circles.  It's called "The Property of the Rebel Librarian"  by Allison Varnes.  It's about June, who is in middle school and loves to read.  Her big sister has just gone away to college so she's adjusting to the scrutiny of being an only child.  She has a bit of a crush on a boy named Graham and her best friend Emma is trying to help them get together.  June hangs out in the library quite a bit because she loves to read and the librarian, Ms. Bradshaw, encourages her by giving her lots of awesome books to read.  But her parents find one of the titles that Ms. Bradshaw gave her and forbid her to read it.  Her parents are even more surprised when they find out that Ms. Bradshaw wants June to come and help when the author comes to visit school.  Her parents visit the school and get the author visit cancelled, the book removed, and Ms. Bradshaw suspended.  In fact, they want to make sure that June is only reading appropriate material, so they confiscate all her books at home and form a committee at school to remove all the books from the school library that they deem inappropriate.  June is really angry and then she finds a Little Free Library that offers some of the books that have been purged from her library.  Then a cute boy asks if he can borrow one of the books that she's been sneakily reading.  Then other kids start asking if they can borrow books.  She starts needing to keep track of who has what so she starts keeping a notebook that she titles "The Property of the Rebel Librarian".  The story follows a fairly predictable pattern and has a satisfying resolution.  This is probably more of a middle school book than an elementary school book because of the romance pieces as well as the titles that are mentioned, but it's certainly an excellent book to raise a conversation with kids about why grown ups might think that books are inappropriate for them.  I wish the book had given the adults in the book a few more opportunities to discuss that very thing because most of the adults just seemed heavy handed and overly simplified.  But it was a good story and I think the kids are going to like it a lot.