More terrific new middle school fiction

These last few days have felt pretty realistic to me, so more realistic fiction may or may not have been what I was looking for.  Except that's what was in the TBR pile from Netgalley, so ok.  The good news is that they were really different from the kind of realism I've been living, so it was nice to get into someone else's head for change.

The first one is called "The Brave" by James Bird.  The cover of the e-book I got had it spelled like this "Th3 Brav5", which should be an indicator that this character doesn't think like most people.  The main character is Collin, who has grown up with his dad.  He doesn't know his mother at all, expect that she's a Native American.  It says in the description of the book that Collin struggles with OCD.  His OCD manifests itself in counting, which doesn't seem that unusual to me.  Except that Collin counts letters.  He counts the letters as people speak to him and when he responds to them, the first thing he says is the number of letters that person just said to him.  For example, if I said "Hello Collin"  He would respond "Eleven, Hello Mrs. Tanner".  What I can't believe is that it never comes up in the book how incredibly intelligent a person would have to be to be able to count the number of letters when people are speaking to them.  People in Collin's middle school tease him and act like he's a freak.  Even the teachers find him annoying and his dad has no idea what to do with him.  So when Collin gets into ONE MORE fight, his dad decides to send him to live with his mother.  His mom lives on an Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota and it's different in SO many ways from Collin's native California.  It turns out that Collin has a much more complicated family than he ever would have believed.  He also falls madly in love with the beautiful girl next door who teaches him many lessons.  He learns about Ojibwe culture (and gives up a few cultural stereotypes).  This is a wonderful story about acceptance, bullying, learning new things, and family.  It's probably best suited for middle school and up-the romance part is kind of big for elementary school.  I think the kids are going to like this one a lot and teachers will find a lot to love about it too.  

 The second one is called "Seven Clues to Home" by Gae Polisner and Nora Raleigh Baskin.  It's told from the viewpoints of two different kinds, Joy and Lucas.  They have been best friends since they were in second grade, but their relationship is evolving.  It's Joy's birthday and Lucas has left her a series of clues to find her present, which is a lot different from other birthday presents they've given to each other.  Except that Lucas was killed on the morning of Joy's birthday last year and Joy has been trying to figure out how to live her life without Lucas.  It's a sad and happy story about dealing with a loss and telling about telling people about your feelings.  I don't want to tell you too much more about the story because it was so compelling and so great to read.  I loved these characters and I loved figuring out how the story was going and I think the kids will like it too.  Again, because of the romance factor, this one is probably better served to middle school students rather than upper elementary.  But it was a great read.  

And here's the book trailer!