Skip to main content

Genre: Middle School







There are tons of authors who love writing those sweet middle grade books full of twelve year old protagonists growing up.

Some Middle Grade books I've read:
  • The Companion Quartet by Julia Golding
  • The Jack Blank series by Matt Myklutch
  • Savvy and Scumble by Ingrid Law
  • The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan
  • The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley
  • The Princess for Hire trilogy by Lindsey Leavitt
  • The Keeper of the Lost Cities series by Shannon Messenger
  • A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd
As you can see I am a big fan of middle grade books. I can't get enough of them as long as their crafted and written well. What's a well crafted middle grade book?

Like all good books they have great plots and wonderful characters. In almost all of the middle grade books I've read the main characters have started off rather innocent and naïve, unsure of the world and where they belong but as the story goes on they discover so much about themselves. Maybe that's why there so appealing. The characters learn and grow so much as the story goes on. I would say more than some teen characters in Young Adult books.

Savvy (Savvy, #1)
Take Mibs (her full name is Mississippi Beumont) for example from Savvy. She lives in a family where on the their thirteenth birthday they get a power. Little or big. Her big brother Rocket has a thing for electricity while Fish can control the weather. At the start of the book she is so excited for her birthday. That is all she can think about but then her Papa ends up in the hospital and everything goes topsy turvy for her and her family.
As a just-turned-thirteen year old she impulsively goes off to wake her Papa from his slumber at the hospital. During the journal on a Bible bus with some other kids from her church she experiences so many different things for the first time. Isn't that what its like to become a teen? To be thirteen? She starts having feelings that she can't control and she's trying to find her place in the world all while figuring out what power she has. That's just one example of many vibrant and wonderful characters in middle grade books. Like Mibs a lot of the protagonists in this genre are stumbling into being a teenager, feeling things they don't normally feel and doing things they don't normally do.
12842828
Middle grade books have unique plotlines that set them apart from other genres. When I think of middle grade and plots the first author that comes to my mind is Shannon Messenger.
Each middle grade book has a coming of age theme in them at least a little bit. Whether the protagonist is just coming into an unknown power or high school they always have a familiar plotline to them. Shannon Messenger's books are long and full of twists and turns that I don't normally see in middle grade books. Her protagonist Sophie Foster goes through more than most being whisked away to a magical elven realm where she has to figure out where her place is there, how to fit in, and not be awkward or weird. She has so many secrets to uncover about herself and through the last three books she has grown and started coming into who she truly is. Sophie has to face her fears and Shannon Messenger crafts her plots so that Sophie is thrown into situations where fear is inevitable.

Like in all other genres voice is essential to crafting a great middle school book. I adore Ingrid Law's unique southern kind of voice but I've already mentioned her characters. My next favorite would likely be Natalie Lloyd's voice in A Snicker of Magic. 18222556
Her main character Felicity and her mom and sister are more like gypsies than anything else. They hop from one place to another until the land in Midnight Glutch where her mother grew up and says that magic used to thrive there. Now though there is only a trace and Felicity believes whole heartedly that she can get it back because Felicity has some magic of her own. She can see words floating around and she collects them. But what makes Natalie Lloyd and Felicity's voice so unique is that she uses so many bright descriptive words and her descriptions themselves are rich and full and took my breath away as I read them. The words that Felicity could see took my breath away. Words like "clutzerdoodle," when Felicity was introduced in front of a new class. Or a description like this:
"The word friend looked buggy too, when it wriggled through the air--FRIEND grew six sets of legs and six sets of arms, and all the letters danced together, then kicked, then danced, then kicked again."
I especially loved the word "spindiddly." I found myself thinking the word for weeks after I read this book.

There are so many more amazing middle grade books out there and I hope this post was helpful to you all!

                         What do you think of the middle grade genre? Have anything else to say?

Comments

  1. Hey, visiting from the GTW link-up. :)
    I write MG, so this was a nice, enjoyable post for me to read. Thank you for giving the genre a shout-out! Following you on Google+ now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey! I'm glad you liked it! Thanks for checking out my blog! :):):)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Revise like a Pantser ft. Big Hero 6 Gifs

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope you've had a great week so far and that you have a great Easter weekend ahead! We plan on going to my grandparent's on Friday to celebrate Easter with family and spending the night there so that'll be a fun time. :) Alright, so I contemplated doing an Easter-y post on here but I wasn't even sure what that would look like... So instead, I thought I'd do something fun and happy in honor of the celebration of Easter on Sunday. Without further ado, here is your Big Hero 6 gif filled revising process from a real life pantser: The end of your first draft is in sight! You type like crazy, stay up past your normal bedtime until it is finished. When you type The End, the satisfaction that you actually did this thing sets in. Guys, it is the sweetest feeling ever. Knowing you worked so hard to complete this draft and came out on the other side. Unscathed? Perhaps not. But triumphant? Definitely! That first draft is a total disast

How to Write a Negative Character Arc

Anyone else love reading a train wreck? I find negative character arcs refreshing and fun to read and watch because not a lot of people do them. Like I'm a sucker for a redemption arc. I love characters that start out horrible and bad and "irredeemable" and then slowly redeem themselves and become the good guy. But from time to time I just love watching a good character go bad. Call me evil but I hope I'm not the only one who enjoys this. I've actually wanted to write this post for a while after rewatching Merlin last year and then over the past month me and a friend were rewatching Star Wars and I've always enjoyed the prequels because of Anakin's downward spiral. Also the last season of The 100, you watch as Octavia completes her journey to becoming one of the meanest, worst antagonists in the show. And that's saying something. The other day I really thought about what other characters who have negative arcs there are but I honestly couldn't th

Friday in Review: May Monthly Wrap-Up

Happy Wednesday once more everyone! I hope you've all had a great May. May has been full of lots of life stuff and writerly stuff and reading. I am so excited to share it with you all (along with an awesome new thing I'm doing for next month on here)! May Writing: May was full of lots of writing... Like lots. I finished draft four of The Lost Ones, came up with the name The Lost Ones and finished editing draft five. Now comes the hard work of plugging in all those changes and edits into my Word doc. Oh the joys of writing... ;) But for real, I am so excited that I finished the read through for TLO and I am even more excited to finish this draft so I can get it ready for betas. This month I also planned out the series... I've never planned out a series ever. I'm a pantser so what do I do? I make life hard for myself by winging not only my novels but entire series too. That whole not planning thing? It didn't work for me and since I'm wanting to take myself m