Characters facing big challenges

It seems an appropriate time to talk about facing big challenges, since this whole virus-stay at home-school online thing is pretty challenging!  Thinking about different kinds of  challenges is kind of a nice diversion.  These books were certainly that.

The first one is called "Like Nothing Ever Amazing Happened" by Emily Blejwas.  It's about Justin, a middle schooler who is struggling to adapt to a new normal.  His dad died awhile back and part of the problem with his dad's death is that there were a lot of unanswered questions.  Justin's dad was a Vietnam War vet that struggled with PTSD.  He didn't talk much about it and was careful with the words he did speak.  His dad was killed by a trolley and one of the things that Justin wonders is if his death was a suicide or just an accident.  His mom and older brother are doing the best they can to try to hold things together.  His brother is a talented athlete but has taken to working at the local KFC to help the family.  His mom is going to church (a lot) and that seems to help her.  Justin's best friend is a Vietnamese boy named Phu and his family offers some levity to Justin's sadness.  Justin is also getting bullied at school (he's really smart and kids tease him about being a nerd) but he grabs on to a history project that offers him an insight into the local community and a connection to some of the other kids in his class that wasn't there before.  There's also a small romance piece that is lovely as well as an offering of poetry that helps to put things in perspective.  I really liked all the characters in this story.  They felt like people I knew and I wanted to be friends with them.  I think the middle grade and middle school kids will like them a lot too.  This would be a great book to open conversations on grief of all kinds, but it's a really good story too.

This second title shows what a difficult category middle grade fiction is to try to write for.  Middle grade fiction is meant for kids from 3rd grade to 8th grade.  The emotional range of this group is enormous along with the maturity range.  These two books together are probably bookends on the group of middle grade fiction, the first one more toward middle school and this one more towards 3rd and 4th grade.  This one is called Ways to Make Sunshine by Renee Watson.  I should first mention  that I'm a huge fan of Renee Watson's work.  She writes books that resonate so deeply, it's hard to even put it into words.  Yesterday I was lucky enough to get to hear her speak at a School Library Journal event (online!  Distance learning!  No personal spaces were violated!).  She started by reciting a poem she wrote about where she's from (Portland, OR), that was the most wonderful thing I heard all day.  So, I hope you are lucky enough to get to hear her speak one day and I hope I'm lucky enough to get to hear her live and in person one day!  ANYWAY, she has a new book out and it's perfectly wonderful. It's about a girl named Ryan who lives with a loving family.  Her parents remind her often that her name means "king" and that her parents named her that so she would be a leader.  She tries hard to live up to that, even when there is a substitute teacher (who's doing every thing wrong), even when she and her family have to move into a smaller house across town because her dad lost his job, even when her best friend seems to have new friends because she also moved but into a bigger and fancier house.  There are so many wonderful things about this story-the very real struggles of elementary school students, the amazingly supportive but busy parents and grandparents as well as the spunky spirit of Ryan.  This title is going to be loved by middle and upper elementary school kids and read aloud often!  I loved this book and I can't wait to share it with my students.