November's Middle-Grade Minute: 4 Diverse MG Books To Cozy Up With

Book pictured above: Snow & Rose by Emily Winfield Martin 


Get ready to meet 4 MG books that will give you ALL the cozy, warm, and fuzzy feels!




I started this blog post the first week of November with the intentions of uploading it here within a few days...Well...erm... we see how that went.

In New England, November is dark and bitterly cold. The days are shorter, and the breathtaking fall landscape, now barren of festive Halloween decorations and red, gold, and orange foliage is now a barren wasteland of skeletal leafless trees and constantly gray skies.

Friends, this is my least favourite time of year.

Yeah, there’s NaNoWriMo, Huevember and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (more on that later) but Novembs is a dud.

There is one way to ward off the chill of the coming winter and to keep the Scorpio and Sagittarius season from being a total bummer: BOOKS!

Cozying up with a steamy, fragrant, mug of tea or cocoa, or if you’re a wacko like me inhaling a gallon of iced tea with a bendy straw, and reading a fabtastic book is a surefire way to beat the doldrums.

Here are 4 diverse books to get you started!

1. You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P!

Obsessed with a YA fantasy series Magically Mysterious Vidalia (a hybrid of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and World of Warcraft) Jilly P spends hours each day geeking out on the De La Court fansite chat room for 11 to 13-year-olds.

These fangirls and fanboys don’t just gush over the characters and plot twists but they also openly talk about their lives.

Like how 7th grader Jilly and her parents are left reeling when they discover her baby sister Emma is deaf. Suddenly Jilly and her ‘rents are tossed into a whirlwind of doctors appointments, specialists, and puzzling terminology. Exhausted and overwhelmed, Jilly’s parents are just getting by. But Jilly sees it as a puzzle. One she’s determined to solve.

Not one to sit still and armed with a can-do attitude Jilly dives into the world of Deaf culture. Determined to learn sign language and become her sister’s best friend, teacher and #1 supporter Jilly does what she does best. LEARNS!

Excited and encouraged by everything she learns from the internet and books, Jilly euphorically appoints herself the newest Deaf culture spokesgirl and informant... ANNNND in the process offends her internet friend and crush ProfoundInOaktown. Ruh-roh!

You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! can be wolfed down in one sitting. The text alternates breezily between the chat room conversations on the young Vidalia fansite and Jilly’s day by day prose, textured with description and emotion. Written for an upper middle-grade audience You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! is a remarkable little book that teens and adults can also love.

As a character, Jilly was a total sweetheart from start to finish. Her friendship with her best gal pal Macy and her tight bond with her ‘rents and her Aunt Alicia make You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! a joy to read from cover to cover. Her fierce loyalty to her little sister and her eagerness to learn sign language are such fantastic parts of her. I love the message of acceptance and embracing differences that echoes throughout the novel.

Jilly’s friendship with Profound, known IRL as Derek, a proud Deaf and Black tween, becomes a central part of the story. This is also where Jilly P’s direction shifts. Halfway through the book, the focus on hearing culture and Deaf culture takes a turn down Black Lives Matter street.

In a very 2018 moment during Thanksgiving dinner, Jilly’s boisterous Uncle Mike goonishly tells a story about rowdy Black teens. Followed up by out-of-touch Gram insists that Aunt Alicia, a Black woman who married Jilly’s Aunt Joanne, bake a sweet potato pie for the next holiday. The low-key and deliberate racism puts a wedge between Aunt Alicia and half of Jilly’s family.

Author Alex Gino isn’t hesitant about broaching serious topics with readers. Alex unflinchingly looks at casual racism, the shoot first ask questions later mentality of some police and the stigma of being born different. Thoughtfully created characters encourage readers to look at Deafness not as a disability or defect. It’s a beautiful thing when an author doesn’t dumb things down for young readers.

Race and Deaf culture, and what divides us and brings us together intersect in You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! Lovingly and sensitively written Jilly P glimpses into one precious life among many and is touching and sincere novel for readers of all ages.

2. Ava and Pip

Forget Frozen for “positive” portrayals of sisterhood and girls friendship. Toss that overhyped Disney flick onto the fire where it belongs and instead crack open Carol Weston’s Ava and Pip. A story of two sisters: terminally shy Pip (who barely makes a peep) and her bold little sister Ava who voraciously writes and speaks her mind.

Ava may be a couple years younger than Pip but she’s always felt older- as far back as Ava can remember Pip was always the fragile one and the one who needed the most attention. Carol Weston doesn’t put it in words but keen readers will recognize that Pip suffers social anxiety. Weston realistically shows the wobbly relationship between a sibling with mental illness and one without.

Ava and Pip doesn’t just focus on those bonds but also on Ava’s writing aspirations. Encouraged by her supportive teachers and friends, she enters a writing contest with one goal in mind: protect her big sis from new girl Beatrice, who, with her boy-girl parties, chatty and outgoing personality and active social life is taking away every one of Pip’s friends.

Ava’s story, Sting of the Queen Bee (get it?) causes unprecedented damage and makes Ava rethink what it means to judge people before really getting to know them, and the power of kindness. In a refreshing twist, Ava discovers Beatrice isn’t a friend stealing wicked witch and Pip isn’t totally innocent when it comes to her lack of friends.

Ava and Pip turns the girl vs girl trope on its head and shreds it into confetti. Girls don’t have to compete with one another to be better, and they don’t have to take each other down to be successful. Friendship is a far more valuable currency and one that’s lovingly addressed in the simple but not stupid plot.

Weston dabbles in diversity by including LGBTQ and non-white characters. These characters don’t feel scripted or wooden and they all play important roles in this book. Especially Ava’s gay school librarian-- soon to be wed to his boyfriend, and Ava’s Latina, math-loving best friend Maybelle. Dimensional and well developed, each of the characters feels real enough to touch!

In first-person journal entries, Ava confesses her hopes and fears and all of her wildly colourful observations. Ava’s the kind of girl that leaps before she looks which gets her tangled up in trouble more often than she wants.

Ava Wren is such a charming, hilarious, and endearing character that the last time I LOVED a MG series lead to the extent that I love Ava Wren was back in April when I was TOTALLY taken by Mildred Hubble in Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch series.

It’s punched-to-the-gut shocking that Ava and Pip isn’t an actual 10-year-olds journal typed up. I am ASTONISHED that a middle-aged woman wrote this book. I mean that in the kindest way possible. It’s so realistic and entertaining that it doesn’t feel like a work of fiction! Packed with Ava’s colourful way of seeing the world, her mile-a-minute thoughts and her hilarious family and friends this book practically reads itself.

3. Annie’s Life in Lists 

I’ve read several middle-grade books written in verse. I LOVE them. A lot.

But what I haven’t read up till now, is a MG or YA book written entirely in the form of lists! Kristin Mahoney’s debut, Annie’s Life in Lists, is essentially a long-form bullet journal chronicling the first year 5th-grader Andromeda (call her Annie!!!) spends in her new town and new school.

After living in Brooklyn moving to slow and suburban Clover Gap, New York is a heck of an adjustment for Annie, Ted, and her parents.

Hiding her superhuman photographic memory and missing her Brooklyn BFF Millie, Annie dreads her smalltown Clover Gap school. She makes it through by scribbling everything that crosses her mind in her journal.

The tone of Annie’s Life in Lists is, in a word: feel-good. Kristin Mahoney has a playful and upbeat voice that skips across each page. At moments Annie seems a bit mature for a 5th-grader, her word choice and emotional intelligence line up more with a 12 or 13-year-old but she ultimately is realistic and believable.

Annie’s lists are constantly changing themes and lengths and make this a dynamic and engaging book that doesn’t fall into a dull pattern. Unlike what you might write to get groceries or what you need to do on a weekend morning, Annie’s lists are loaded with descriptions, dialogue, and delightful ink drawings. As readers turn each new page, reading Annie’s Life in Lists feels more and more like having a best friend whisper their secrets, hopes, dreams, and fears.

Carefully tucked into the text is racial awareness and what it means to be prejudiced, either intentionally or not. Annie is struck by how white, Clover Gap is. “Homogenous” her mom explains to her. After living in Brooklyn, a big city filled with different colours, languages, and cultures, Clover Gap at first feels so small and cramped that it’s downright claustrophobic. Annie’s new best friend, Zora, is Black and for the first time Annie sees casual racism in action. Annie’s baffled by how some of the townsfolk STILL exclude Zora’s family and don’t treat them quite the same as they do non-Black families.

It’s not a bleak message, it gives readers something to ponder. As Annie makes new friends, participates in school events and town traditions Clover Gap opens up to her in ways it didn’t before.

Like summery sunshine, Annie’s Life in Lists glows and leaves a warm impression. Readers in 3rd grade and beyond can read Annie’s Life in Lists independently and dive into a light and relaxing story illuminated by the brightness of friendship and kindness.

4. The Miscalculations of Lighting Girl

When she’s 8 Lucy Callahan is struck by lightning. Instead of being burned to a crisp she survives with minimal damage and (bonus!!!) gets a new superpowered brain. One with savant level math skills and a serious case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Four years later 12-year-old Lucy has stellar grades and a GED under her belt. She’s a shoo-in for the most prestigious colleges in the nation. That is until her Nana and Uncle intervene. Staying shut up inside the house with her textbooks and plugged into math-loving communities online isn’t enough for a tween girl.

Lucy needs a social life! *gasp*

Nana’s conditions? Before Lucy can start her college studies she has to (1)spend the 7th grade school year in middle school, (2)make a friend, (3)read a book that ISN’T a textbook, and (4)join a regular activity. Easy as pi! (3.145926535...aaand you get the decimal 😂 point).

So off she goes to middle school, where her quirks and rigid routines --like being unable to sit until she does an elaborate sit-stand-sit-stand-sit-stand ritual-- and choking up on reading aloud in English class because she has to count all the letters in each word, make her the school “freak”. Her germ phobias and zealous cleaning (she always has hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes on her) don’t help her case.

A school project focused on volunteering in the community pulls together Lucy and two classmates-- friendly Windy (don’t call her Wendy!) and aloof Levi. The trio bands together to help Pet Hut, an animal rescue, get more of the cats and dogs sheltered there adopted. It also puts Lucy’s phobias, like, well...dogs and germs to the test.

As Lucy carves out a space for herself amongst the other 7th graders, makes her first IRL friends, and a meets a sweet abandoned dog named Cutie Pi (YES! Like 3.14...you get the gist!) with a white marking that looks eerily like lightning she’s left with a shockingly hard decision. Will she go back for 8th grade, or begin college?

There’s so much to admire about The Misadventures of Lightning Girl. At the top of the list? Lucy’s personality, voice, and the portrayal of her obsessive-compulsive disorder. Lucy’s ‘funny dance’ and her fixation on completing her rigid rituals introduce readers to what it means to have OCD. By writing Lucy’s story Stacy McAnulty asserts that OCD is not a punchline or joke. The sentence ‘I’m SO OCD’ is still very improperly used and overused. The Misadventures of Lightning Girl looks to change that with the earnest and serious portrayal and representation of a “comedic” and misunderstood mental illness.

The Misadventures of Lightning Girl has a lot of love for the STEM field. What’s especially fun is just how much math is written into the text. Number figures are used instead of words to bring us even closer into Lucy’s life and how she thinks. In middle-grade lit there’ve been just a handful of girls dabbling in STEM (think Violet Baudelaire from A Series of Unfortunate Events) Lucy is a modern-day STEM loving heroine who creatively looks at challenges.

There are moments in The Misadventures of Lightning Girl that are syrupy sweet with Disney vibes. In these moments Lightning Girl is unmistakably middle-grade. Rounded out by a convenient and slightly candy-coated ending Lightning Girl is a gentle, and funny novel that won’t distress young or very sensitive readers. With its focus on diversity, a cast of well-written characters and sturdy plot The Misadventures of Lightning Girl is a heartfelt, and dazzling book that can be bolted down by readers of all ages.

So what are YOU reading right now? And how was your November?! I'd love to hear so drop a comment below!!!😍💖






Top photo arranged and taken by me
Book covers from Goodreads, Amazon and/or Google images
Gif from giphy