In Black Girl You Are Atlas, renowned poet, novelist and Newbery Honoree Renee Watson offers high-impact, widely accessible poems that address universal topics, accompanied by joyous artwork from Caldecott winner Ekua Holmes
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The Best Middle Grade of 2024
Middle grade readers had a spectacular year, with plenty of moments of humor, amazement and reflection. These best books captured the delights, fears, anxieties and joys of those particular years with incredible accuracy.
Readers continuing Kwame Alexander’s Door of No Return trilogy, as well as those starting with Black Star, will be gifted with a reading experience that is equal parts difficult and beautiful.
How It All Ends simply gets the weirdness tweens and teens can feel when shoved into a new situation; the strange and hilarious mundanity of high school; and the inner strength it takes to be who you are in the face of all that chaos.
By Debbie Fong
Next Stop is an immersive, empathetic tale of an important journey that sensitively explores grief and loss even as it celebrates friendship and new experiences.
Hiba Noor Khan’s debut novel, Safiyyah’s War, is a beautifully written, well-plotted work of historical fiction based on the heroic efforts of activists at the Grand Mosque of Paris who led Jews to safety.
Mary Averling bewitches with her debut middle grade novel, The Curse of Eelgrass Bog, which straddles the line between slimy and sweet, concocting a fantasy world that balances snarky demons, magical bogs, concerned witches and awe-inspiring serpents.
Though The First State of Being takes place at the turn of the millennium, readers will be able to identify with Michael’s anxieties over the future of the world.
Full of humor, friendship and just the right amount of danger and villainy, Christopher Lincoln’s beautifully designed The Night Librarian is bound to delight readers of all ages.
By Aida Salazar
Commenting on topics that range from patriarchy to colonialism, the internet to peer pressure, and first loves to heartbreaks, Aida Salazar delivers a fully intersectional look at what it means to try to embody masculinity without toxicity.
Previous Best Middle Grade lists
Recent starred middle grade
Island of Whispers
By Frances Hardinge, Illustrated by Emily Gravett
Black Girl, You Are Atlas
By Renée Watson, Illustrated by Ekua Holmes