New Middle Grade Speculative Fiction

 There have been SO MANY middle grade fiction books coming out this month.  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up!  But so far so good!  Here are two of my newest favorites.

Nell of Gumbling is a fun new fairy tale/graphic novel/mystery/friendship story.  I’m pretty sure there’s not a specific genre for this one, but it was a very fun read. It's written and illustrated by Emma Steinkellner, who also wrote and illustrated the adorable "The Okay Witch" , which I blogged about here.  This new one is about Nell, or Lenore, who lives in a place called Gumbling.  There was a king there once, but when a witch threatened to eat him, he relinquished his throne and the city has been run by a council ever since.  She lives with her two dads, who are star farmers and her two younger siblings, Rib and Schmitty.  She has two best friends, Gil, who is a Thumbkin and Myra, who is a fairy.  Nell has started a journal because she’s super excited to start her internship.  It’s a town tradition for middle schoolers to intern with someone in the town to give them ideas about what kinds of jobs they’ll want when they grow up.  Nell REALLY wants to apprentice with the town artist, but she ends up with the Lorekeeper - a kind of town librarian.  Nell can’t imagine anything more boring and ends up doing tasks like cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, and copying manuscripts.  Over winter break she has a wonderful time with her friends but two new people turn up.  They say they are descendants of the former king and want to turn Gumbling into a tourist destination.  Town reaction is mixed but mostly negative.  When the new descendants start threatening people (like Nell’s dads) things get serious.  The kids decide it’s up to them to make sure these descendants go somewhere else.  This is a fun book to read with themes of friendship and how you get to know people and how you get to know yourself.  Ultimately, Nell finds a way to express her own talents in ways that no ever really considered before and what a wonderful message to readers.  I liked this one a lot.  I think the combination of this highly relatable character and her talents for drawing and writing are going to make this one a big hit with readers.  

The second one is called The Mossheart’s Promise by Rebecca Nix.  This one is a dystopian future fairy story but not a fairy tale, I don’t think.  It starts with a gardener, who creates a terrarium to protect fairies and their magic.  The prologue only says that it’s not safe for the fairies and the gardener, above all, wants to protect the fairies.  However, the terrarium and the gardener’s magic is only meant to last 100 years and after 100 years, the seed the gardener gives them must be planted to break them out of this safe place and allow them to come back to the world.  Except that after 100 years, the fairy guard didn’t want to break out and throws the seed far away and the flower blooms and dies without releasing the fairies.  As the magic ebbs, the fairies have to come up with ways to save their safe place and stories are told and heroes are created without actually understanding their place in the world.  And then one day, it looks like all is lost, the mold is taking over and even the sacrifice of the fairy wings is no longer enough.  One little fairy decides to go on an epic quest to save her family, and hopefully the rest of the fair world.  This is an exciting mystery story.  At first it’s a little tricky to figure out where it’s going-the path is complicated and full of danger.  There is help from surprising places along the way.  There are also betrayals and learning the story of the betrayals is exciting and suspenseful.  There are themes of love and friendship, of doing the right thing even if it’s painful, of what being a hero really means.  I thought this was terrific and I think the mystery lovers and maybe the fairy tale fans are going to love this one too.