New realistic fiction for middle grades

 Did you think I forgot how to write a blog post?  I did not.  Well, maybe I did, but COVID seemed to have scrambled my brain a little...  or maybe a lot and between trying to go to work, to go to our state librarians convention, to spend 10 days  with my parents here and suddenly it was today!  I'd like to tell you that I've done something heroic, but it would be a lie or at least a really big stretch.  Anyway, I HAVE been reading and here are two new ones that you should definitely look for.

The first one is called Sardines.  It's written by Sashi Kaufman and it is wonderful.  It's about Lucas who is in middle school and struggling.  His older brother, Charlie died after he'd left to go away to college and he left a big hole in the community as well as in Lucas' family.  In fact, Lucas' mother has left the family without any big discussion with Lucas, so he doesn't really know why she left or where she went or why.  Lucas feels like he doesn't really have any friends, so he's a bit surprised that when he starts going to an after care program that the kids that are also there could possibly be his friends.  Things really get going when a new kid named Finn shows up and turns everything a little sideways (in the best possible way).  Finn has a way of working around the rules that kids find limiting and the kids friendships blossom.  The story title comes from a game that Finn suggests called Sardines.  The game is similar to hide and seek, except that one person hides and instead of being caught and being out, when the first person finds the hider, the second person hides with them until the last person finds them.  The kids also develop a kind of a contest where they grant each other's wishes and even though the wishes are big and complicated, they all end up getting granted, even if they don't quite have the happy ending that they thought they would.  This is a wonderful story of friendship and families that you choose as well as the stories that people tell about each other.  Middle graders who like realistic stories about characters that feel like friends are going to love this one.  

The second one is a graphic novel and it's not really a new story.  It's based on a book that was written for grownups- The Librarian of Auschwitz.  This one is written by Antonio Iturbe and illustrated by Loreto Aroca.  It was translated by Lillit Thwaites.  It's the story of Dita, a teenager growing up in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s.  She loved to read and had a large collection of her personal books.  When her family was sent to Auschwitz, they were lucky enough to be there at a time when the Germans were trying to put a positive spin on their death camps, showing the happily confined Jews, wearing their own clothes, going to work and having activities that they were allowed to participate in, including a lending library, which Dita ran.  Her father died there from disease and she and her mother were eventually sent to other camps after the Germans lost interest in pretending that they were actually helping the Jews.  Dita survived the war but her mother did not.  After the war, Dita found work and one of her fellow prisoners, Ota, whom she eventually married.  The art work in this has a dark palette, fitting for the story of desperation and sadness.  The pictures vividly show the deplorable conditions and terrible events around the camps, including people being sent to the showers as well as dead bodies being flung into pits for burial.  The terror and desperation of camps almost leaps off the pages.  The publisher has suggested that this would be suitable for ages 8-12, but I think I wouldn't give it to kids younger than fifth grade.  Although this is a well told story, the images of naked women (being sent to their deaths) are so vivid that I probably wouldn't put it in my elementary school library, particularly given the current political climate in Florida.   But even if it isn't good for my library, it's a great story and I think people are going to love this adaptation.