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Tomboys vs Girly-girls In Middle Grade Novels
Laura and Mary Ingalls Georg(ina) and Anne Ramona and Beezus/Susan Kushner Bean and Ivy Clementine and Margaret Junie B. and Tattletale May/Richie Lucille Each of these pairs represents a perceived dichotomy of girlhood: the girly girl versus the “tomboy”. While I use the word “tomboy”, the speech marks indicate my disdain for the very concept. A girl who likes rough-and-tumble and […]
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Harriet The Spy
Kate DiCamillo has this to say about Harriet The Spy: “Not too long ago, I remembered that I read and loved Harriet the Spy [as a kid], and so I went back to it as the adult me, with some trepidation. … And it’s even better and more subversive than I remembered. It’s basically a primer on how […]
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The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban
This middle grade novel features talking animals, especially mice, toys and doll’s houses. The Mouse and His Child is no Velveteen Rabbit, however. As Margaret Blount says, The Mouse and His Child defies classification, and is therefore of interest to critics and children’s literature enthusiasts: Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and His Child (1969) is such a strange, […]
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Once by Morris Gleitzman (2006)
To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Once by Maurice Gleitzman, an Australian middle grade novel by one of our best known children’s book authors, I’m going to take a close look at it using the 7-step story structure which applies to pretty much everything from advertisements to picture books to novels. The Redemptive Power […]
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Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
As an adolescent I was keen to get my hands on the complete works of Judy Blume, but unfortunately only a select few were available to me. I’ve only just read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, Margaret Simon, almost twelve, likes long hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain, and things that are […]
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Middle Grade Writing Advice
WHAT IS MIDDLE GRADE LITERATURE? Middle grade fiction is not written for middle school kids despite sounding like it ought to be. Middle grade is actually aimed at eight- to twelve-year olds, which sometimes bleeds over into seven to thirteen. You can include romance, but only a little. Provide smaller solvable problems and solve them. […]