New Year’s Resolutions: Middle Grade Fiction

There’s no way around it—realistic fiction for the middle grade reader is likely to have a message of some kind. It’s even likely to be a so-called “problem novel.” And, in a Newbery contender kind of way, it might just feature a troubled child of about 10, often left in a small Southern town with a bunch of colorful characters. Think coming-of-age story.

Of course, this doesn’t mean such books aren’t good. In fact, the five I’m going to introduce today are all very good reads. It’s also true that other types of books, such as fantasy, have messages. I'm guessing there’s no such thing as a book without some kind of message!

Having come full circle, then, I’ll talk about excellent middle grade reads and the New Year's resolutions they might suggest. Three of the books are entirely realistic; the other two have elements of magical realism.

Almost Home by Joan Bauer

I like this author’s books very much, so I was happy to read her latest. Sugar Mae Cole is trying to keep it together, but life is falling apart for her and her mother—with no help from Sugar’s unreliable, mostly-absent father, who has a gambling addiction. Sugar’s mother is sweet, but starts to lose it when she and Sugar are evicted. Pretty soon the two of them are in Chicago, homeless.

Sugar has a lovely if slightly unusual support system. Even after she leaves town, her English teacher Mr. Bennett is there for her. “E-mail me,” he says, and eventually she does. Then Sugar finds a frightened puppy and manages to keep it even when she gets dropped into the foster care system. A group home is rough, but she ends up with a couple who are kind to her. This doesn’t go over well with her mother, who is still in a shelter, still struggling. Sugar handles her divided loyalties as best she can. She also helps her fearful puppy, too, reassuring herself at the same time. Slowly, Sugar's life takes on a new shape.

Bauer may be prone to overly tidy endings, but I’m good with that. I believe a children’s book should end on a note of hope—as long as it’s not sicky-sweet. Sugar’s life has improved by the last page, but it’s still not going to be an easy road. Sugar is a thoroughly likable character, and I’m rooting for her all the way into that fictional future of hers. Bauer’s portrait of homelessness may end more happily than most such scenarios in the lives of actual children, but it will certainly clue young readers in to how hard it is to be poor and adrift. That kind of empathy will serve them well in this life where so many people are in difficult situations.

Resolution: Awful as life may get, there are good people (and dogs) in this world. I will reach out to them.

Note: Here’s my review of Close to Famous, the book Bauer wrote before this one.

A Dog Called Homeless by Sarah Lean

By the time you finish this book, you may forget you are reading a story with magical realism in it, which is fine. The most important thing about Cally Fisher is that her mother just died and her father is too grief-stricken to do much of anything for his daughter. When Cally sees her dead mother at the cemetery, her father tells her to stop talking about it and her aunt explains that it’s wishful thinking. But then Cally sees her mother again. And again.

She sees a dog with her mother, too, a friendly wolfhound that she eventually names Homeless. The dog seems connected to her mother, but he is connected to a homeless man named Jed as well. Cally’s father doesn’t want her to have anything to do with the dog or the man, but they keep appearing in Cally’s life.

Cally’s best friend at school dumps her just as she and her father and brother move into an apartment. Starting with a fund-raising challenge at school to go all day without talking, Cally decides not to talk anymore at all. Still, she makes friends with Sam, the boy downstairs who apparently has cerebral palsy and is blind and mostly deaf. Cally is diligent and kind-hearted in her efforts to be a true friend to Sam. Meanwhile, her family finally notices that Cally has stopped talking.

This book is a little heavy-handed with its message and its plot points, but I still liked it. Cally is an interesting character in that she seems to be a little hyperactive, which makes school and social situations harder for her. Her silence is out of character, but it says what no one seems to be hearing otherwise: “Hey, I’m really upset here!” As the book ends, the dog takes on a whole new meaning for Cally and her family, wrapping things up nicely.

I will just add that some would argue that Cally imagined seeing her mother, but the book as a whole seems to say otherwise. I’m in with the magical realism (or maybe faith) on that one.

Resolution: If no one’s listening, I’ll try being quiet and doing something for someone who needs my help.

Fourmile by Watt Key

I will warn you up front that this is a gritty book, pretty violent by MG standards. The author’s website lists it as “YA/9 and up.” That may sound a little conflicted, but I do think Fourmile

might be a good fit for some 5^th through 8^th graders as well as for readers in their teens, especially boys. Southern writer Key has written two other books with strong male characters in tough situations: Alabama Moon and Dirt Road Home. All three include a certain amount of violence, though all three end on a note of realistic hope. (I’m particularly fond of Alabama Moon.)

Fourmile is the story of a 12-year-old boy named Foster whose dad has died recently. His mother is about to lose the farm and is dating an unpleasant man named Dax. Foster rightly dislikes Dax and tries to protect himself, his mother, and his dog Joe as best he can—which isn’t much. When a Shane-like character comes walking up the road with his backpack and a dog, Foster instantly latches onto him, and the man, Gary, stays a while doing work on the farm. Naturally, Dax and Gary clash. Gary’s secret past comes back to haunt him, but not before Gary fights back against Dax and his thuggish friends to protect Foster and his mom.

Fourmile is a heart-wrenching story that is ultimately about fathers and father figures, good and bad. Gary can’t solve Foster’s problems or his mother’s—Gary can’t even solve his own. But he can give Foster and his mother a little courage for grabbing hold of the future.

Watt Key is good at writing adventure-suspense novels for boys, but these books are character driven. Key is good at showing just how hard it is to be human. And at showing how people can keep going just the same. There's a reason this book got three starred reviews!

Resolution: I can't make exactly the life I want, but I will still make a life for myself.

The Second Life of Abigail Walker by Frances O’Roark Dowell

When sixth grader Abigail Walker stands up to her mean little group of friends at school, they turn on her. She has been trying to be “the most medium of the medium girls,” but it’s not working anymore. The girls especially tease her about her weight. Her own father gives her a hard time about it. But, like she tells herself, she’s only 17 pounds heavier than her friends. Is that so terrible?

Abby slowly makes new friends with a couple of school outcasts, who are very nice, but her former “friends” won’t leave her alone. Meanwhile, her mother makes things harder by insisting that everything be lovely and positive at all times. This insistent Panglossian approach winds up exposing Abby to more bullying.

There are new events in Abby’s life, however. She has been nipped by a strange fox and has found something else to think about after crossing a stream, led by a dog. Here’s where the magical realism comes in. Well, in some ways things on the other side of the stream are ordinary. Abby gets to know a boy named Anders, along with his grandmother and his troubled father. Anders’ father is suffering from post-traumatic stress after serving in Iraq.

The fox, however, is magic. Or more properly, mythic. Short chapters here and there in the book are told from the fox’s perspective. The fox follows stories, winding in and out of people’s lives, and you would think she would remain unscathed. But she has been hurt by recent events in a far-off land, and she is not the same, after all. I realize some readers will be put off by these interludes and by the fox’s brief interactions with the other characters, but what is Dowell doing with all this? Bullying is like war, maybe. Human hurt and human suffering for no real reason. And the damage done is incalculable, even epic. It is deserving of stories, of symbols and heroes. Something like that.

This book talks about bullying in unusual and effective ways. Ask yourself, for example, in what way Abby’s parents are bullying her. Abby doesn’t think of this, precisely. Her focus is mostly on her struggles with the other girls. In one amazing passage, Anders asks Abby what the two mean girls can actually do to her. She thinks for a bit about how to explain it, then says, “They can kill you… Only, other people don’t know that you’re dead. Only you know, on the inside.”

This isn’t just a book about bullying; it’s about hope. It’s about looking at the bigger picture and becoming a bigger person. Abby’s second life isn’t just about crossing the stream. It's about helping someone with worse troubles than hers. It’s about growing into a life that isn’t medium size at all.

The Second Life of Abigail Walker is an odd little book. It is also one of my favorite books of 2012.

Resolution: I will not let petty people define and limit me.

Note: Gotta hand it to the Brits. The UK cover shows a girl who’s a little overweight and is facing the viewer with hope and moxie. But the U.S. cover gives us a girl who doesn’t look the least bit overweight. She is shown mostly from the back, staring away from the viewer. She is blandly pretty and very much sans moxie. I swear, one of these days I’m going to move to London!

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

This book has been getting some Newbery talk, so I put it on my To Read list and finally got to it. Did I mention books about girls getting dumped in small Southern towns full of colorful characters? Yep, this one embodies that scenario. But let’s move past that and consider Turnage’s work on its own merits.

Mo (Moses) LoBeau washed up in a little town in North Carolina when she was still a baby during a terrible hurricane. A man most people just call the Colonel rescued her, and now he and Miss Lana are basically her parents. Only, the Colonel wound up with amnesia during the storm, so he doesn’t know about his past. As for Mo, she wonders and wonders about her “Upstream Mother.” The people of Tupelo Landing help her drop messages in bottles farther up the river for her missing mother to find.

But that’s not how the book begins. It starts like this:

Trouble cruised into Tupelo Landing at exactly seven minutes past noon on Wednesday, the third of June, flashing a gold badge and driving a Chevy Impala the color of dirt. Almost before the dust had settled, Mr. Jesse turned up dead and life in Tupelo Landing turned upside down.

Pretty soon Mo has inserted herself and her buddy Dale into a murder investigation. She is also curious about why Detective Joe Starr seems fixated on finding out the Colonel’s secrets. Plus Dale has a guilty secret of his own, though it means he might be able to help with the investigation.

The plot swirls and twirls around Mo, who doesn’t stop moving herself. As you can probably tell from the pass above, Mo has a bright and strong voice, which is what really makes the story. Three Times Lucky is a vivid, fast-paced read that manages to address questions like “What is family?” while solving more than one mystery. All with the help of Moses LoBeau, naturally.

Resolution: I will stick my nose in whenever possible and find out what's really going on.

Now, if none of these resolutions work for you, try this one on for size: This year I will read some very good books!

Note for Worried Parents: As mentioned above, Fourmile is decidedly violent and unsettling. That is, it is appropriate for older children and teens, but may be a little too rough for some parents. The violence is not constant, though a threatening mood hovers over most of the book and some sad, painful things happen. There is something ultimately hopeful and definitely human about the book, but it is not an easy read. 

A Review of Falling In by Frances O'Roark Dowell

I know this writer best for her moving, literary contemporary and historical fiction, e.g., Dovey Coe and Shooting the Moon. (Here's my review of the latter from last year.) So of course, I was intrigued to see how she would handle fantasy. It didn't surprise me to find that Falling In felt as much like magical realism as fantasy in spots, despite the whole portal-to-another-world trope with its nod to Alice in Wonderland.

Because Falling In isn't really about magic, it's about people and prejudice. It's about being a loner and an outsider, whether you're a grown woman or a young girl. It's about the power of the imagination, the way it comforts and protects the outsider, and the ways it can fail her. Also the way imagination can change the world. No small themes here.

First we meet Isabelle Bean and find out that she's not like the others. She's quirky, imaginative, a dreamer. She is also thoroughly ostracized by the kids at school. Even her mother, an orphan and a widow herself, isn't certain how to interact with a girl who isn't interested in shopping at the mall.

There's a barely visible edge of otherworldliness to Isabelle, a silver thread that runs from the top of her head to the bottom bump of her spine. It frightens other children away. They're afraid that if they sit too close, the thread will weave itself into their hair and pull them into dark places they can't find their way out of. A girl named Jenna claimed it reached out to grab her one day as she walked up the aisle on her way to recess, but she had her scissors in her pocket (don't ask why) and nipped it before it could entangle her.

Isabelle is surprisingly stoic about all of this, as much puzzled as troubled by the situation. A great reader, especially of fantasy, she decides she must be a changeling. For one thing, what is that buzzing noise she's been hearing all morning at school? Sent to the principal's office for not paying attention in class, Isabelle steps into the nurse's office and, imagining the possibilities, opens a mysterious door. Her final remark to a classmate waiting for the nurse is, "Yes, I believe I'd like to visit the country of Mice. I'll try to be back by lunchtime, but if I'm not, save one perfect french fry for me, would you?" Then Isabelle "falls in," emerging in another world, another school.

There the children take one look at her clothes and accuse her of being a witch. After semi-convincing them she's not, Isabelle sets out to explore her new domain. It turns out the local villages send their children away to camp in the forest for fear of a horrible witch. (This witch, like a medieval queen, embarks on a grand progress each summer. Only instead of simply visiting her subjects, she travels from village to village in search of children to catch and devour.)

Isabelle being Isabelle, she heads straight for the witch. Along the way, she meets a village girl named Hen who agrees to accompany her, although Isabelle hides her true purpose. They eventually come to the cottage of an old herbwoman named Grete who feeds them and teaches them her craft—but Isabelle begins to suspect that Grete is the witch.

Other than Isabelle's initial journey to another world and some mild psychic powers, there's not a whole lot of magic in this book. Instead, Dowell is interested in the idea of how someone might come to be labeled a witch, and how awful stories might be born from communal fears. Fortunately, she is also interested in laying such fears to rest.

Isabelle's own connection to this strange land and its witch add further dimension to the tale.

The author occasionally comments during the story, interposing short chapters in which she addresses the reader. Because she's a very good writer, the interludes are well written and often funny, but they do pull the reader out of the story. This is done deliberately, so you'll have to see for yourself whether you like the effect. For example, just as Isabelle is about to turn the knob of that mysterious door, the writer interrupts to say, "I'd like to stop for a moment, if I could. I want you to think about how many times you've opened a door. What happened?"

Dowell asks readers if they've ever imagined opening a door and finding something unusual on the other side. Then she suggests:

If you have a little time to waste, go put your hand on the knob of the door to your room. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. What's that noise you hear? Could it be your books reading themselves to one another? Is that your goldfish whistling Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik? That thump, thud, crash!—your pillows having a pillow fight? Do you smell the earthy, froggy smell of trolls? What exactly goes on in your room when you're not around?
But I digress. Back to the story.

In the end, Isabelle's adventure in the world she visits is more character than plot driven, and a bit didactic to boot. Still, Dowell is talented enough to make this work. She spices her tale with humor, too: when the witch finally runs into trouble, the situation is both scary and amusing. Then things get darker and Isabelle has to do some quick thinking to turn the tide.

Falling In is a quirky book, but a likable one. I think my biggest disappointment might be expressed as a dream of my own. I can't see Dowell writing a traditional fantasy—I know she needed to do her own thing here, and her roots as a writer of tender real-life stories sort of seeped into the genre she chose. Pragmatic Dowell seems to pull back from the magic in her tale. For example, having given us the "silver thread" passage quoted above, which is lovely and unearthly, Dowell tells us a few pages later that a strange light the other students see hovering around Isabelle turns out to have a realistic explanation. Dowell then goes on to tell the story of a witch who isn't one, or at least not very much. I realize one of the themes of this book is how small communities can transform a slightly unusual person into a monster, but I feel that something else might be going on, as well: this author seems torn between her habitual reality hat and the new fantasy one she's trying on.

What Dowell does beautifully here is write magical realism. The places where she uses that approach in this book, primarily in the early chapters, make me long to see a story from her that is neither contemporary realism nor fantasy, but entirely magical realism. Because anyone who imagined Isabelle Bean could create something truly wonderful in that genre.

Finally, I want to point out that I was an Isabelle once, and I suspect that some of Dowell's readers will be, too. While Falling In doesn't make everything right for the dreamers of this world, it does offer them comfort, laughter, and a kind of secret hope.

Note for Worried Parents: Bullying, threats of violence, and an upsetting story about a baby who is hurt. Generally encouraging, however.

A Review of Shooting the Moon by Frances O'Roark Dowell

Jamie’s father is the Colonel, and her world is the Army. Growing up, she plays war games with her older brother and wishes she could be a soldier. When her brother, T.J., decides to go fight in Vietnam, she is thrilled—he will be a hero! Jamie is utterly baffled when her father tries to discourage T.J. from enlisting. After all, this is the man who wears his fatigues and combat boots to play football in the yard with his daughter:

“Pathfinders,” he’d yell, zigzagging across the yard toward the imaginary end zone.

“Combat ready, sir!” I’d yell back, completing the old 8th Infantry Division call-and-response we’d learned as kids, which was part of our life, just like answering the phone “Colonel Dexter’s quarters” or making sure we had our military IDs with us whenever we went to the PX or the commissary so we could prove who we were, proud citizens of the United States Army. Hooah, as we liked to say. Hooah, yes sir.

Pretty soon T.J. is writing letters home from Vietnam, but with each letter, he encloses a canister of film for Jamie, instructing her to develop the film herself. Jamie has already been hanging around the army base’s rec center, where she has a summer job sweeping up and spends most of her time playing diabolical games of gin rummy with Private Hollister. Another soldier, Sergeant Bird, agrees to teach Jamie how to develop T.J.’s film.

So begins a book where an older brother’s wordless messages to his sister are more powerful than anything he might have written. Jamie shares the photos with some of the soldiers at the rec center and with a handicapped friend, Cindy, who likes to keep T.J.’s shots of the moon. She also shows them to her parents. Then, as T.J.’s photo subjects change, Jamie finds herself holding back certain photos, not showing them to her parents at all.

Shooting the Moon’s message may seem heavy handed if you haven’t actually read the book, but the story telling is stronger than that. Jamie doesn’t change her mind in a direct way so much as she blossoms out of innocence into ambiguity about the meaning of war, of heroes, and of fathers. Her friend Cindy is an intriguing character, a purified, magnified version of Jamie’s naivete but also occasionally the voice of the "wise fool."

As the book draws to a close, Jamie makes a choice that casts light on her evolution. Of course, the author’s spotlight would have to be the moon. The moon has been a symbol in a lot of literature over the years, so it’s really kind of stunning that Frances O’Roark Dowell manages to give it a new and subtle significance in this book. Shooting the Moon won a Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Award for 2008, and I can see why. Whether you’re anti-war, pro-war, or nothing of the kind, I suggest you take the time to see the world through Jamie’s eyes, and through T.J.’s camera lens.