Books for Middle Graders are more important than ever. The excitement builds with the CIBA Announcement with the 2025 Gertrude Warner CIBAs Long List!

EveryLibrary's Executive Director, John Chrastka, discusses why he believes in libraries.

What an interesting and strange book, story. Although graphic novels aren't usually my thing, I really liked this one! At first I thought the girl on the cover was some sort of half-deer, half-kid creature (again, not my thing, but I decided to give it a try because I'd read that there was something gender-related about the story), so I was surprised to find out it was just a girl who has some puffy hair she puts up in creative ways and not antlers of some sort.

She won't like this pic, but I think it's a good one because it shows how serious she is about her exercise and how put-together she looks even when walking in the boonies with just me. She will like this one, taken on our trip to Sardinia with my daughter's family last month. I'm so proud of my mom. A week ago today she was driving me to the airport in Traverse City so I could return to Virginia for a bit, and she seemed a little out of sorts, so I asked if she was OK, if anything was wrong.

In an author interview a couple months ago, I was asked, What does "Reading with Pride" mean to you?" Which really made me think--not what do I think it means to others, not what do I think it's supposed to mean, but what does it mean to me? I came up with something like this (only shorter, since there were a number of questions I was to answer), and, June being Pride month, I thought I'd share it:

I'm back up north. As you can see from the pink flags and wooden stakes all over--and the empty cement pad where the old house we had removed used to sit--we've seriously begun preparing to build another house in its place (or very nearly in its place). The stakes and flags are from our architect, and the wetland delineation we had to have done.

After a little shipping snafu, my ARCs finally arrived--not the greatest timing, though, just as we were leaving on a trip to go visit our daughter in Italy. It was exciting to see them, and I was pleasantly surprised not to be at all disappointed about anything about them (I was expecting that I might have to adjust the front endpaper map where the pages meet in the spine)!

Ollie in Between is such a good book it deserved to have its picture taken where Ollie would feel at home (I loved how Ollie identified with mushrooms, and the whole mushroom metaphor, but couldn't find a mushroom growing). I have a lot to say about this upper middle grade book. It's hard to know where to begin. But let's begin where I did, with its cover.

I enjoyed this middle grade novel by Kyle Lukoff. Although it felt more like YA to me, more like it's for jr. high school readers and above and not for elementary school kids--the age range given for it is 10-14 years old--it was an interesting mix of realistic/fantastical, secular/Jewish, historical/contemporary (historical in that it's set right after the covid lockdown ended; contemporary in that that's barely historical and also in that it explores LGBTQIA+ themes such as transphobia that are unfortunately still as relevant today, five years later, ...and probably will be for at least a few more by the looks of it).