Ages 9-11

"Eleven-year-old Maya’s life is bit of a mess. Her dad just moved out to pursue his stand-up comedy dreams, her mom seems more preoccupied with running the family’s Russian deli than getting Dad back, and Maya’s anxiety and germ worries have only been heightening. Her grandma always tells her “slozi goryu ne pomozhet”—tears won’t help sorrow—but right now it’s hard to be strong. So when her teacher Ms. Banta announces the sixth-grade...

3 stars

"Before she moves away to a new city, Penny wants to prove that she was truly saved from drowning by the Bawk-ness Monster but instead must rescue kidnapped cryptids from an evil collector along with Luc and K"--Provided by publisher.

"Cassi loves spending time with her grandfather. His games, songs, and stories have always brought her endless joy. This visit with him, though, is different: Grandpa seems to be losing track of things, including everything from the stories they're sharing to who Cassi herself is. So when he goes missing after wandering off from his own backyard, Cassi knows she has to figure out where he's gone. What she discovers is a world filled with memories,...

"Malcolm is the youngest child of Hmong refugees, and he was born over a decade after his youngest sibling, giving him a unique perspective on his complicated immigrant family. In the first part of the story, we meet Malcolm as an elementary school kid through the eyes of the adults in his life—his parents and siblings, but also the white teachers at his Minnesota schools. As middle school begins, we encounter Malcolm in his own words, and suddenly...

"Pumpsie needs a win. Or to be more precise, he needs the Nashville Wildcats to win. Pumpsie’s been waiting his entire life—twelve whole years!—for his favorite team to make it to the playoffs. And this year—finally!—they’re just one win away. But when Pumpsie accidentally gets trapped in Lookout Field the night before the last game of the season, with only a lost dog named Campy for company, he may have accidentally stumbled into the...

5 stars

"Katie is dreading the summer ahead, while her best friends will be away at camp. But when Katie gets a job catsitting for her upstairs neighbor Madeline, things get interesting. For starters, Madeline has 217(!) cats. And they're not exactly...regular cats. Plus, Madeline only seems to go out EXACTLY when the Mousetress, the city's most notorious villain, commits a crime. Could it be that Katie's neighbor is really a super villain? And that it's...

"On her tenth birthday, Meticulous Jones--known to her friends as Metty--receives her fate, as all children do, in the form of a magical tattoo on her hand. She hopes that her ink will reveal something exciting: a tattoo that will symbolize travel, or discovery, or adventure. What appears is a skull, balanced in the palm of a violet glove. Metty's fate is to become a murderer. Metty is swiftly hidden away by her father, Moral Jones, in a remote Welsh...

"Middle school is a dungeon ... At least, that's how Jess sees it. Luckily, she and her best friend Olivia know how to escape into the sprawling worlds of their own imaginations. The two friends have always loved making up stories, first with little kid games of make-believe, and more recently with the fantasy roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. When they play, Olivia runs the game as Dungeon Master and Jess is the solo party member, playing a take-no-prisoners,...

The talented team of Robert Venditti and Olivia Stephens brings to glorious full color the novel that best-selling author Jason Reynolds called "A brilliant action adventure rooted in African American lore." Seventh grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in. Tristan is dreading the month...