Middle grade speculative fiction-summer 2022

There have been SO many amazing speculative middle grade fiction books this summer.  Here are two of my new favorites!

 If you've been reading my blog (and I KNOW you have been, thank you!), you know, I'm not a big fan of scary books.  There are so many scary things in the world, I'd really rather NOT spend my time reading about them, but this one called to me!  To let me tell you about it.

The first one is called "This Appearing House" by Ally Malinenko.  Allie wrote this terrific creepy ghost story last year called "Ghost Girl" that I really enjoyed, so I was looking forward to this one.  There's an author's note at the beginning of the book from Ally that tells that the inspiration for this book was her own battle with cancer (which has been largely victorious) so right away, that sets up readers for a really different kind of experience.  The book is told from the viewpoint of Jac, a middle school girl who doesn't have many friends and is looking forward to NED-5 years with No Evidence of Disease, because when Jac was little, she had cancer.  It was scary and difficult and Jac and her mom worried about it coming back EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  Until one day, a house appears on the cul-de-sac.  A house, just appears and it seems to be beckoning Jac to come in. Jac hasn't told her one and only friend, Hazel, that she had cancer, in fact, no one in the community knows, because Jac doesn't want to talk about it.  One day, the town bully dares Hazel to go into this never before seen (but really scary, creepy house) and so he and Jac go in, along with the town bully and another kid named Sam.  The house keeps telling Jac over and over that Jac asked for this, invited the house to come and so Jac and Hazel have to go through a series of tasks, which turns out to be Jac dealing with the trauma of cancer, cancer treatment, and the uncertainty of death.  This is an amazing (scary) metaphorical story about coping with trauma of all kinds for just about any kind of person, kid or grownup.  It's not an easy book to read (especially if you don't like scary things) but it's worth it to get to the other side and think about how trauma can be just like this really scary house, where things are distorted and your interpretation of things is sometimes different from how they really are AND how important it is to talk to people about what you're feeling.  I think, even if it wasn't my favorite book to read, it's a really important book to have in our library because of the conversations that it could open.  

The second one isn't really scary, unless you consider middle school scary, which it sort of is, but not in the same way as ghosts and goblins and houses that appear out of nowhere.  It's called "You Only Live Once, David Bravo" and it's written by Mark Oshiro.  I read his book "The Insiders" last year and it was great too but this one is something special.  It's about David Bravo.  David lives with his very loving parents who adopted him as an infant.  David is starting middle school with his best friend, Antoine, who lives next door.  They've been friends a long time and are both a bit anxious about starting middle school.     It turns out they don't have any classes together and they don't even have lunch together!  It starts to feel like they might not even be friends any more.  David has such an epically bad first day that he really wishes that he could do the day over again.  When I say a bad day, consider a first day that starts with homework, questionable lunch choices, bullies, and an injury.  But suddenly there's a talking dog in his backyard who offers him the opportunity to back in time to change his life but it has to be a big change, not like a Coke or Pepsi kind of a change, but a change that would make a difference in his whole life.  At first David doesn't believe that it would work but when he finally takes Fea up on her offer, he finds out that making a small change can actually cause some big changes to happen.  It turns out that part of the reason Fea has a job offering people a chance to change their life is because she feels like there was one event in her own life that she'd like to be able to go back and change.  It also doesn't work quite the way he or Fea thought it should and so he ends up having to make more than one change and see how each change plays out.  This is an amazing story about friendship and romance, about family that you choose and regrets about actions taken and not taken.  It's funny and poignant and I think kids are going to love this one.  It also has two different couples who are debating about their friendships, if they are more romantic or just platonic, which brings up a wonderful opportunity to talk about middle school romance and what that might look like as a grown up  I also love thinking about big and small decisions and how they might change the course of your life.  And really, who doesn't love the idea of time travel?  The dialogue in this book is amazing and I think you should read it as soon as possible!