This week, we publish Part 2 of The Caterpickles Middle Grade Gift Book Guide – 15 Great Middle Grade Novels and 10 Well-Known Series that Kids Keep Checking Out at my middle school library. #books
My favorite thing about December is that people start asking me for book recommendations. This year, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about good books for middle schoolers, so I thought I’d share my recommendations on Caterpickles. This week… 10 ten great middle grade graphic novels.
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152, the first book in David Petersen’s graphic novel series about a band of warrior mice reads like a cross between Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge and Brian Jacques’ Redwall.
Mister Monday, the first book in Garth Nix’s The Keys to the Kingdom fantasy series is an extraordinary fantasy novel of competing agendas, time-bending experiences, and mysteriously fatal epidemics.
A literate gorilla travels the world to prove her best friend’s innocence in The Murderer’s Ape, the award-winning middle grade mystery novel by Jakob Wegelius.
This week, I decided to hear for myself why my now 12-year-old daughter still collapses into laughter every time she listens to (or reads) the Bunnicula series by James Howe.
This week, my daughter discovered the Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat books by Johnny Marciano and Emily Chenoweth. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard so much joy coming from her part of the world, so I thought I’d tell you about it.
News broke this week that paleontologists have determined that a set of bones found in Big Bend back in the 1980s is actually a hitherto unknown type of duck-billed dinosaur. Whenever I hear of a new species, I can’t help but wonder how long that new species identification will last.
One of the few books I’ve read that deals with what happens in a WWII concentration camp after liberation, Vesper Stamper’s beautifully illustrated book, What the Night Sings, is essential reading for our times.
Regular readers know that I’ve been looking for a copy of Roland T. Bird’s 1944 essay, “Did Brontosaurus ever walk on land?” since 2011, when I had to rely on J.A. Wilson’s second-hand account of it while researching the answer to the pressing question: “Could sauropods swim?” A few weeks ago, I discovered that I could acquire Roland T. Bird’s memoir, Bones for Barnum Brown: Adventures of a Dinosaur Hunter, through the Northern California Interlibrary Loan Service. So of course I did.
CATERPICKLES 