In Still Sal by Kevin Henkes (Greenwillow Books, October 2024), we read about Sal Miller’s difficulties in coming to terms with her own challenging start to the first grade. The Year of Billy Miller captured her brother Billy’s perspective in first grade, and here we have Sal’s own set of circumstances in dealing with a

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (originally published 1885) is a classic novel of a boy “growing up” and coming to terms with the world, faith, and friendship. Written by talented Samuel Clemens, Huckleberry Finn takes the familiar rebel child Huck, who was first introduced in the novel about Tom Sawyer, and gives

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Author-illustrator Sophie Blackall captures an imagined large farm family’s journey through the years in Farmhouse (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022). Her text tells about the things the family does in the house and her detailed collage illustrations go from room to room illustrating the large and loving family growing up in the house.

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As is so often the case with Kate DiCamillo’s wonderful books, I finished reading Ferris, her newest offering, and I felt immediately that I need to go back and read it again. It left me with a satisfied feeling that everything will be alright, even when things don’t work out like you’d want them too.

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Lost Kites and Other Treasures by Cathy Carr (Amulet Books, February 2024) addresses anxiety and other mental illness with a middle-school story featuring Franny, who escapes to making creative “found” art when things start to feel overwhelming. Although Franny tries not to think about her absent mother and the traumas of her early life (after

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Doug Swieteck, a fourteen-year-old transplant to the small town of Marysville, learns to cope with his life as he adjusts to new situations during the 1968-1969 school year in Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion Books, 2011). Even as he faces the struggles of moving to a new middle school, Doug must still

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The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007) is a powerful young adult novel that shares the pivotal 1967-1968 school year from the perspective of seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood. In The Wednesday Wars, his fellow students go to their religious schools (Catholic school or the Jewish synagogue) on Wednesday afternoons. As the lone

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Beverly Cleary’s Henry Huggins series nicely captures the creative Henry through his upper elementary years, especially focusing on his innovation, his creativity as a kid, and the antics of his adopted stray dog, Ribsy. Although the series is dated, having been written beginning in the 1950s, Henry’s adventures show universal frustrations and difficulties that any

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Beezus and Ramona is one of my favorite books by Beverly Cleary. First published in 1955, it give the perspective of the the familiar character of Beatrice Quimby (a recurring character in the Henry Huggins books), showing the universal frustrations of having a little sister. Through the course of the book, Beezus comes to understand

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A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat (First Second, February 2023) is a middle grade graphic novel memoir of Dan’s experiences when he was 13 years old and had the opportunity to explore Europe. Set in 1989, a different era for traveling, the novel captures the essence of that time. The story revolves around

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