Missing Mom - middle grade fiction 2024
It's funny how sometimes there's kind of a "thing" in middle grade literature. This week, I read two different books that were published in the same week and both were about kids who were dealing with a missing mom. It's fairly often that children are left to their own devices, particularly in middle grade literature-think James and the Giant Peach, Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, to name a few, so it's not really surprising to find missing parents, but these two books both showed the emotional toll this can take on kids, particularly if the leaving hasn't been explained to them. Let me show you what I mean. The first one is called Olivetti. It's written by Allie Millington and it appears that this is her first book but she has several that are coming out in the next year or so. Here's a link to her website if you want to find out more. This story is told from two perspectives, one is Ernest, who is 12 and is having a ha...