Here’s today’s discussion prompt from the folks at Armchair BEA:

Middle Grade/Young Adult
Our final genre of discussion is one that we know is a popular one these days: books for the younger crowd, from middle grade to young adult. If you do not normally talk about this genre on your site, maybe you want to feature books that you remember impacting you during this stage in your life. If this is where you tend to gravitate, maybe you want to list your favorites, make recommendations based on genres, or feature some titles that you are excited to read coming later this year.

 Greetings, Readers!

I’m excited about today’s topic. I think all of us who are readers have special feelings about books we grew up with or books that transport us to a time of innocence (even if that innocence is then lost as happens in so many YA books). I’m going to mention three (after all, three is the color of magic) middle grade books that are special to me.

My Special Middle Grade Books:

Number one position has to go to The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes. This is not just one of my favorite childhood books, it’s one of my favorite books. Period. I even remember being in the school library and holding this book in my hand for the first time. Of course, that was the day my teacher fainted in the library from a bleeding ulcer. Do you suppose that had anything to do with my vivid memory?

The Middle Moffat is a quiet, gently humorous book about Jane and her quest to forge an identity for herself. She’s an odd sort of child (as was I) with a quirky but incisive way of looking at her community, determined to claim her stake. One of her goals is to help the Oldest Inhabitant reach his 100th birthday. Jane is also determined to give him 100 presents despite being poor. The Middle Moffat examines age and class in this funny novel about finding one’s place in the world.

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech is a book I picked up from the book fair at my daughters’ school. Like Jane of The Middle Moffat, the protagonist Sal is trying to make sense of her world. However, the backdrop is more poignant as Sal’s quest involves searching for her mother and trying to fit in after her father moves her to a different state. As a member of the Seneca nation, Sal is closely tied to nature, and the move to suburbia devastates her. Sal manages to make a new friend, Phoebe; perhaps they come together because Phoebe’s mother also disappears, which draws the two girls together in a mystery with tragicomic consequences.

Walk Two Moons is a complex work with three intersecting storylines. I love love love the writing of this book. Sal describes how her distraught father pounded a wall one night (he knows why Sal’s mother is not coming back), here’s how chapter one ends:

“He led me downstairs and showed me what he had found. Hidden behind the wall was a brick fireplace. The reason that Phoebe’s story reminds me of that plaster wall and the hidden fireplace is that beneath Phoebe’s story was another one. Mine” (3).

Lovely, yes?

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park is a must-have for any self-respecting Koreaphile like myself. What’s really fun about this book is that the orphan protagonist Tree-ear is not the change character. It is Tree-ear’s antagonist, the arrogant, grief-stricken potter Min, who begins to warm under Tree-ear’s steady influence.

A Single Shard is a wonderful text to use while teaching students about Confucianism. Yes, Confucius brought us The Golden Rule and tamed a corrupt state, but Confucianism has its dark side, too–a rigid, unforgiving class and gender structure. Tree-ear with his seemingly impossible dream of becoming a potter, allows young people to imagine what good character, kindness, and hard work can accomplish despite terrible odds.

So, these are three of my favorite middle grade books. How about you? What books carry a special meaning or memory?

Thank you, Armchair BEA!