Welcome to the first Middle Grade New Release Spotlight of 2024! The blog has a gorgeous new look for the new year, plus I’ve got a change in the Spotlight for 2024 that I know some of you will be very happy about…
I’m going back to the weekly Spotlights!
The Google Slides presentation will still be monthly feature, which I will add to every week. There will still be three Google presentations – YA, middle grades, and picture books. I am also keeping the monthly printable list.
The links to the YA and Picture Book Spotlights, the printable list, and the Google Slides presentation are all linked at the bottom of this post.
Feedback is welcome as I continue to tweak the Spotlight to make it as useful as possible for YOU. I know how useful the Spotlights are, and I’m always looking for ways to make them even better. If you have a suggestion or comment, please email me at leigh[at]readerpants[dot]net.
On to this week’s Middle Grade Spotlight! Remember that I consider “middle grade” books as Grades 3-8, so elementary and middle school librarians will want to have a look at this one.
Author: Linda Crotta Brennan
Genre: historical fantasy, folklore
Setting: village in Nova Scotia, Canada
Recommended for: Grades 3-8
Themes: selkies, secrets, ballads, Celtic folklore
Protagonist: female selkie, tween
Starred reviews: SLJ
Pages: 208
THE SELKIE’S DAUGHTER – PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
Brigit knows all the old songs and legends by heart: of Neve, the daughter of the sea god; of the warrior Finn MacCool; and of people who are not quite human. But Brigit knows the truth. It’s evident in the webbing between her fingers–webbing that must be cut. She’s the daughter of a selkie. A truth she must keep secret from everyone.
But someone in her village is killing young seals. Angering the king of the selkie clan, who vows revenge. A curse that will bring storm, sickness, and death. To protect those she loves, Brigit must find a way to Sule Skerrie, the land of selkies, to confront the Great Selkie and protect the young seals from harm.
Like sitting by a warm fireplace, The Selkie’s Daughter is an imaginative fantasy, steeped in Celtic mythology and rich with detail. Perfect for fans of mermaids and Studio Ghibli-esque stories.
Author: Mary Averling
Genre: adventure, mystery, supernatural
Setting: a creepy bog
Recommended for: Grades 3-7
Themes: oddities museums, curses, failing family businesses, town history, secrets
Protagonist: female, age 12, white
Starred reviews: no starred reviews
Pages: 256
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
Nothing about Kess Pedrock’s life is normal. Not her home (she lives in her family’s Unnatural History Museum), not her interests (hunting for megafauna fossils and skeletons), and not her best friend (a talking demon’s head in a jar named Shrunken Jim).
But things get even stranger than usual when Kess meets Lilou Starling, the new girl in town. Lilou comes to Kess for help breaking a mysterious curse—and the only clue she has leads straight into the center of Eelgrass Bog.
Everyone knows the bog is full of witches, demons, and possibly worse, but Kess and Lilou are determined not to let that stop them. As they investigate the mystery and uncover long-buried secrets, Kess begins to realize that the curse might hit closer to home than she’d ever expected, and she’ll have to summon all her courage to find a way to break it before it’s too late.
Author: Tom Llewellyn
Copyright: 2024
Genre: fantasy, adventure, steampunk
Setting: Guildhouse of Smiths
Recommended for: Grades 4-8
Themes: metalworkers, secret societies, grandfathers, old mansions, imprisonment, impossible tasks to complete
Protagonist: female, age 13, brown skin, orphan
Starred reviews: No starred reviews
Pages: 320
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
When Eden Smith moves into the beautiful and bizarre old mansion housing her grandfather, she discovers a strange society of elderly metalworkers whose mastery verges on the magical.
Deadly mechanical birds, a cavernous chamber full of dirty dishes, a highly dangerous game of Machinist BINGO–life at the guild is not only strange, it’s also dangerous.
Eden’s grandfather, Vulcan Smith, the most gifted of all the metalsmiths in the mansion, has just been sentenced to live out the rest of his days locked in a tiny basement room for rebelling against the guild.
To save him, Eden will have to complete The Five Impossible Tasks, a series of deadly feats that have already killed off many of Eden and Vulcan’s ancestors.
With the help of her new friend Nathaniel and a cast of eccentric old silversmiths, blacksmiths, and inventive machinists, Eden sets out to do the impossible before her newfound grandfather is lost to her forever.
Author: Mindy Nichols Wendell
Copyright: 2024
Genre: historical fiction
Setting: 1935, tuberculosis hospital in upstate New York
Recommended for: Grades 3-8
Themes: tuberculosis, quarantine, runaways, parental anger (father), ill parent (mother), life inside a sanatorium, history of healthcare
Protagonist: female, age 10, white, tuberculosis patient
Starred reviews: No starred reviews
Pages: 208
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
When Halle and her mother both come down with TB, they are shunned—and then they are sent to the J.N. Adam Tuberculosis Hospital: far from home, far from family, far from the world.
Tucked away in the woods of upstate New York, the hospital is a closed and quiet place. But it is not, Halle learns, a prison.
Free of her worried and difficult father for the first time in her life, she slowly discovers joy, family, and the healing power of honey on the children’s ward, where the girls on the floor become her confidantes and sisters.
But when Mama suffers a lung hemorrhage, their entire future—and recovery—is thrown into question…
Author: Diana Ma
Copyright: 2024
Genre: realistic fiction
Setting: small town near Seattle, Washington, USA
Recommended for: Grades 3-7
Themes: filmmaking, private schools, family businesses, friendship, racism, gentrification, competition, Chinese culture, family expectations
Protagonist: female, Hui Chinese American, Muslim
Starred reviews: No starred reviews
Pages: 304
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
If there’s one thing Lily Hong can’t stand, it’s being second best. That’s why she and Max Zhang have been bitter rivals ever since he swooped into town as the new kid with the cool clothes and his fancy downtown Chinese school and showed her up in the fifth-grade reading challenge.
She had wanted to be the one to win the pizza party for their class. Okay, so that was two years ago . . . her best friends Kelli and Lauren didn’t totally get it, but they were on her side. And that’s why they agreed to help Lily with her submission for the Clarktown’s Got Talent video competition. Filmmaking is Lily’s passion—which means winning is more important to her than ever.
Unfortunately, finding time to work on her video submission is proving harder than ever. In addition to doing regular homework and attending the Chinese school her parents own and run out of the Clarktown Community Center, Lily’s been getting weird vibes from her parents lately and she can tell something is up.
Then her mom announces that the Clarktown Community Center is having its first showcase, and the students of Hong Chinese Academy will be performing as a group—traditional Chinese dance!
Lily is more confused than anything else—the community center is practically falling apart and they think this is a good time to put on a show? Could it be that the community center is in trouble and the only way to save it is to make the showcase a huge success? Lily has no choice. She’ll have to juggle the video competition and the art of Chinese dance simultaneously.
But when Max Zhang unexpectedly shows up in her class at Chinese school with his perfect Mandarin and his surprisingly good dance skills, Lily might just have to embrace her longtime rival as a key part of her plan to save the community center.
Author: Lisa Yee
Illustrator: Dan Santat
Copyright: 2024
Genre: adventure, humor, illustrated novel
Setting: Reforming Arts School, San Francisco, California, USA
Recommended for: Grades 3-7
Themes: not fitting in, secret agencies, fighting crime, loneliness, friendship, found families
Protagonist: female, age 12, Chinese American; cast is racially diverse
Starred reviews: No starred reviews
Pages: 298
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
Olive Cobin Zang has . . . issues. And they mostly aren’t her fault. (No, really!) Though she often slips under the radar, problems have a knack for finding her. So, imagine her doubts when she’s suddenly dropped off at the strangest boarding school ever: a former castle turned prison that’s now a “reforming arts school”!
But nothing could’ve prepared Olive for RASCH (not “rash”). There, she’s lumped with a team of other kids who never quite fit in, and discovers that the academy isn’t what it seems—and neither is she. In fact, RASCH is a cover for an elite group of misfits who fight crime . . . and Olive has arrived just in time.
Turns out that RASCH is in danger of closing, unless Olive’s class can stop the heist of the century. And as Olive falls in love with this wacky school, she realizes it’s up to her new team to save the only home that’s ever welcomed them.
Author: Nashae Jones
Copyright: 2024
Genre: romance
Setting: Reforming Arts School, San Francisco, California, USA
Recommended for: Grades 4-8
Themes: magical powers, matchmaking, Valentine's Day, Cupid, overachievers, rivalry, forcing someone to love you
Protagonist: female, age 13, 8th grader, biracial (Black and white), daughter of Cupid
Starred reviews: No starred reviews
Pages: 288
PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY
Erin Johnson’s thirteenth birthday unfolds like any other day, from her mom’s quirky and embarrassing choice of outfit to racing her nemesis, Trevor Jin, to the best seat in class—front row, center. But her gifts this year include something very out of the ordinary: magical powers.
Erin discovers her mysterious father is actually the love god Cupid and she’s inherited his knack for romance. It’s not the most useful ability for an overachiever with lofty academic and extracurricular goals…or is it?
Erin desperately wants to be elected president of the Multicultural Leadership Club, and as usual, Trevor is her fiercest competition. He’s never backed down from a challenge before, but if Erin makes him fall in love with her, maybe he’d drop out of the race and let her win.
With her magical pedigree, wrapping Trevor around her finger is a snap, and having him around all the time is a small price to pay for victory. But without their cutthroat rivalry bringing out the worst in each other, Erin realizes Trevor may not be as bad as she thought, and suddenly her first foray into love gets a lot more complicated…
THE LINKS YOU’LL NEED FOR JANUARY
- January 2024 – MG Books – Google Slides presentation – click “use template” to make a copy – share with students and teachers! Remember that this presentation will eventually include titles for the entire month of January, not just this week.
- Printable list of all January 2024 Spotlight titles – sorted by genre and grade level group; click “use template” to make a copy
- The Ginormous Book List – this month’s titles (all grades) are #3743 – #3749 on The Ginormous.
MORE JANUARY 2024 NEW RELEASE SPOTLIGHTS
ABOUT THE SPOTLIGHT
The New Release Spotlight began in May 2016 as a way to help librarians keep up with the many new children’s and YA books that are released each week.
Each week, school librarian Leigh Collazo compiles the New Release Spotlight using a combination of Follett’s Titlewave, Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble. Recommended grade levels represent the range of grade levels recommended by professional book reviewers. See the full selection criteria here.
Inevitably, there are far more books that meet my criteria than can make it on the Spotlight. When I have to make the tough decisions on what to include, I just use my “librarian judgment.” Would I buy this book for my own library? Would my students want to read this book? Is the cover appealing? Does it fill a need?