{"id":23588,"date":"2021-11-07T21:39:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T02:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/?post_type=articles&p=23588"},"modified":"2021-11-30T13:27:58","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T18:27:58","slug":"new-and-notable-middle-grade-fiction-for-kids-who-care","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/articles\/new-and-notable-middle-grade-fiction-for-kids-who-care\/","title":{"rendered":"New and Notable Middle Grade Fiction for Kids Who Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"No Vacancy<\/strong>
\nby Tziporah Cohen (Groundwood Books, $16.95)
\nA contemporary Jewishly connected family relocates from New York City to take over a crumbling motel in rural NY\u00a0State, hoping to make a new life for themselves. Before long\u00a0it seems clear that they are in need of a miracle to make a go\u00a0of it. Spunky eleven-year-old Miriam and a new friend decide\u00a0to take on the challenge, with some surprising results, and\u00a0eventually an interfaith community of well-drawn characters\u00a0comes together to respond to antisemitism in this nuanced\u00a0and heartening debut middle grade novel by Toronto-based\u00a0oncology psychiatrist Tziporah Cohen.<\/p>\n

\"\"Letters from Cuba<\/strong>
\nby Ruth Behar (Nancy Paulsen Books, $17.95)
\nBased on her own grandmother\u2019s experience, Lucky Broken Girl author Ruth Behar, an anthropologist, offers fictionalized letters of twelve-year-old Esther, writing to her sister back in Poland about her journey to Cuba. She is the first in the family to join their dad who came three years earlier to earn and send back money to feed his family and hopefully bring them all over to join him. Esther experiences a new culture, bananas, blessings, the gift of a golden stopwatch, hardships, but also the kindness and generosity of strangers, and finds creative ways to help her family.<\/p>\n

\"\"Maybe He Just Likes You<\/strong>
\nby Barbara Dee (Aladdin, $17.99)
\n#MeToo for middle graders. Seventh grader, Mila, who has\u00a0responsibilities at home for a younger sister, a dog, and making\u00a0supper\u2014becomes the object of teasing and unwanted touching by a group of male classmates who think it\u2019s harmless fun and\u00a0even compete for points in harassing her. Mila\u2019s restrained\u00a0protests and complaints are greeted with disbelief, cynicism,\u00a0blame and even jealousy, causing her to feel more and more\u00a0isolated until things build up to a dramatic explosion that along\u00a0with the discovery that she is not the only one this has been\u00a0happening to, finally prompts efforts at intervention at school.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom<\/strong>
\nGraphic Memoir
\nby Tyler Feder (Dial, $18.99)
\nIn a format that lends well to her story, Tyler Feder shares, ten\u00a0years later, her mother\u2019s illness and death when the author\u00a0was a sophomore in college. Told and illustrated with candor\u00a0and humor, this bittersweet and easy-to-read young adult\u00a0debut shows the trajectory of life before a cancer diagnosis,\u00a0accompanying an ill mother, funeral rituals and shiva\u2014which\u00a0sometimes feels like a party. It\u2019s about the feelings and\u00a0experiences that remain, that stay with her in spite of their\u00a0pastness, and those that have been given up to a new reality.<\/p>\n

Naomi Danis is an editor emerita of Lilith and the author of many popular children\u2019s books, most recently<\/em> Bye, Car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books to help kids handle difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":304,"featured_media":23747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[3752,3753],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/23588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}