“We’re all in the same boat, paddling through the chaos of seventh grade. Except everyone else’s oar is pink or blue and mine’s purple with glittery flecks of angsty confusion on it,” says Ash, who isn’t like most kids in their suburban Ohio middle school. Some days Ash dresses like and feels like a boy. Other days, they dress like and feel like a girl. Some people know them as Ashley, others as Asher. It’s all a little confusing, especially for Ash. Lately, they feel a lot of pressure to choose a single permanent name and gender identity.

Throughout Jules Machias’ debut middle grade novel, Both Can Be True, Ash explores their gender fluidity and what it means to be nonbinary in a culture that often demands people choose between pink or blue. Although Ash’s mom and best friend are supportive, a traumatic assault at Ash’s previous school has made them fearful of what might happen if they came out to their new classmates. Plus, they’re afraid of scaring away their crush, Daniel. Both dog lovers, Ash and Daniel grow close as they work together to save an old dog named Chewbarka from being put down.

Machias alternates between Ash’s and Daniel’s perspectives as both kids take tentative steps toward being fully themselves. Each serves as a gentle and appealing conduit for readers to discover issues that LGBTQ tweens face, as well as the right and wrong ways parents can support them. Machias highlights how Daniel is also bound by masculine gender norms, such as false notions that boys shouldn’t be emotional and definitely shouldn’t cry.

Both Can Be True illustrates how the many existing anxieties common during middle school multiply when one’s gender identity is in question and when gender norms are socially enforced. It’s a heart-wrenching but hopeful look at what everyone has to gain by embracing a more expansive understanding of gender.

Everyone knows the story of Peter Pan, right? Adventurous lost boys, mischievous fairies, murderous pirates and a bloodthirsty crocodile—but how did all these iconic characters come to Neverland in the first place? To answer this question, Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Sisters of the Neversea explores the island of Neverland and looks closely at the events that shaped Peter Pan himself.

Lily and Wendy have no idea that someone is watching them argue during what might be their last night as stepsisters. With Wendy and her dad moving to New York for the summer and Lily and her mom staying behind in Oklahoma, this might really be the end of their family. But everything changes in an instant when a mysterious boy named Peter, a wayward shadow and a persnickety fairy named Belle come in through their bedroom window.

After being whisked away to Neverland, Wendy and her little brother, Michael, find themselves among the Lost, a group of young boys who seem to be rapidly forgetting who they are and where they came from. Summoning all her bravery, Lily follows in pursuit, planning to rescue Wendy and Michael and somehow return home. Once Lily arrives in Neverland, she joins with a group of Native American kids whom Peter has taken from tribes across America, including Leech Lake Ojibwe, Black Seneca, Cherokee Nation and Navajo.

Leitich Smith, who, like Lily, is Muscogee Creek, fills Sisters of the Neversea with many of the hallmarks that readers expect from a Peter Pan story, including pirates, fairies, crocodiles and merfolk. But she also confronts and rectifies many of the harmful tropes and stereotypes of J.M. Barrie’s original story as well as those perpetuated by Disney’s animated film. Both Belle and Wendy admonish Peter when he uses an offensive word to refer to Native people, and they challenge his demeaning behavior toward girls, women and Native Americans.

Ultimately, the novel offers redemption not just for Peter but for many of Neverland’s other characters as well. With expertly shifting perspectives, an oft-broken fourth wall and subtle but firm remedies to elements of the story best left in the past, Sisters of the Neversea is a welcome new addition to the legend of Peter Pan.

One morning, Malian awakens from a dream to find a dog outside her grandparents’ home on the reservation, where she’s been staying since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the same dog, in fact, that she’d been dreaming of only minutes before. She names him Malsum, which means “wolf” in the language of her people, the Penacook. 

Malsum may look fierce, but he proves to be a gentle and loyal protector. When a coughing mail carrier approaches the house, Malsum’s bark keeps him at bay. When a woman from social services shows up, checking to see if the home Malian is living in is “fit” for children, Malsum stands between Malian and danger once again, his lethal canines bared.

If Malsum is Malian’s protector, her grandparents are her lodestar. They provide the stories and histories that lead her to a deeper understanding of herself and her country. Their stories reveal how COVID-19 and the postal service worker who exhibits its symptoms are not only a threat but also a reminder of pandemics past, of smallpox and other diseases that decimated Native tribes. Their stories link the nosy social service worker to generations of mistreatment of Native people, whether through bad faith treaties that forcibly removed them from their lands or by so-called “boarding schools” that separated children from their families, languages and culture.

Joseph Bruchac’s Rez Dogs is a poignant reminder that history, story and identity are intimately intertwined. Bruchac centers the story of one Native American girl during the pandemic and, with it, the stories of her family and her people. This short, pithy novel written in spare verse brings the weight of history to bear on the present, revealing not only how history shapes us but how, through the stories we tell, we can shape history.

The bestselling author of the young adult novel Dread Nation brings her storytelling prowess to middle grade to create a story that will definitely cause you to start seeing things—namely, ghosts, but also the injustices suffered by generations of Black Americans.

In Ophie’s Ghosts, Justina Ireland transports readers back to the early 1920s, a time when Black Americans were fleeing the South to escape the poverty and persecution caused by the long arm of Jim Crow laws. The novel opens in rural Georgia, as 12-year-old Ophelia “Ophie” Harrison’s father wakes her up in the middle of the night and tells her to take her mother to her favorite hiding spot just beyond the tree line. From there, she witnesses a mob of angry white men burn her family’s home to the ground. The next morning, Ophie learns her father was murdered by the same mob earlier that day because he voted—and that’s how Ophie discovers she can see and speak to ghosts.

Ophie and her mother flee to Pittsburgh to live with Great Aunt Rose with hopes of starting over. Rose tells Ophie that the women in their family have been seers for generations, aiding the ghosts trapped in this world so they can transition onward to the next. It’s their duty to help bring the ghosts peace so the human world can remain peaceful as well. In Pittsburgh, Ophie and her mother take jobs at Daffodil Manor, where they meet Mrs. Caruthers, the wealthy estate’s sickly, irritable matriarch, and her benevolent son, Richard. Daffodil Manor is also home to a full staff of house servants and a whole host of ghosts. 

Ophie gradually befriends the kind but elusive ghost of Clara, a servant whose unsolved murder occurred in the manor, which keeps Clara tied to it, unable to pass on. But Clara’s ghost can’t quite remember the details of what happened to her, so Ophie is determined to uncover the murderer as well as their motive. In doing so, she risks unearthing secrets about the dead that threaten to put the living directly in harm’s way.

Ophie is a compelling, realistic heroine with a strong sense of justice and duty. The hopefulness and idealism she’s able to retain, in spite of the horrors she’s experienced and the death that surrounds her wherever she goes, ultimately become her saving grace. Though the story’s pacing is uneven at times, Ireland conceals a massive reveal so expertly that even the savviest readers won’t see it coming.

In an author’s note included in advance editions of the book, Ireland writes that she wanted to explore the question, “How do we grieve when the ghosts of our loss appear in the everyday suffering around us?” Ophie’s Ghosts offers a moving answer through Ophie’s unwavering sense of what is just—for both the living and the dead.

Nothing has been the same for Hazel or her family since Mum drowned in a kayaking accident. Hazel sees danger everywhere and never leaves the house without her blue “Safety Pack.” Her little sister, Peach, knows and feels much more than she lets on. And Hazel’s surviving parent, Mama, doesn’t laugh or smile as much anymore. Worst of all, Mama has spent the past two years moving them all from one state to another, even though Hazel desperately wants to go home to California. 

When they land in Rose Harbor, Maine, for the summer, Mama reconnects with an old friend from her childhood whose daughter, Lemon, is intent on befriending Hazel (whether Hazel wants to be friends or not). Suddenly it seems that Mama might have entirely different plans for their family than Hazel realized. 

Author Ashley Herring Blake’s first middle grade novel, Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World, received a Stonewall Honor in 2019. Her third, Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea, is a masterful depiction of what it’s like to experience a deep loss as a child and the sometimes unexpected ways that grief can manifest in young people. Blake doesn’t hesitate to vividly describe the pain that Hazel feels but also fills the girl’s story with plenty of light and comfort, whether it’s the beauty of the sea or a growing connection with someone who understands how she feels. Blake often includes LGBTQ+ characters in both her middle grade and YA novels, and she incorporates a character’s nonbinary identity with the perfect balance of straightforwardness and sensitivity.

Blake’s gorgeous prose will stir deep emotions within readers, and her descriptions of the seaside setting are full of lovely sensory details. It’s heartwarming to watch Hazel heal with help from the sea, reawakening to her dream of becoming a marine biologist. This story of a girl navigating the choppy waters of grief toward a brighter shore is heart-rending but full of hope.

As an amnesiac shape-shifter, there are a lot of things Trouble does not know. They don’t know where they came from, or why the StarLeague is hunting them down and keeps calling them a dangerous escaped criminal. They don’t know the meaning of basic concepts like cows, lunch or art. But when Trouble stows away on the smuggler ship Hindsight, they make some important discoveries, including words like family, smile and home.

In Sarah Prineas’ Trouble in the Stars, readers join Trouble and the multispecies crew of the Hindsight as they evade the StarLeague’s relentless General Smag and his warship, the Peacemaker. Hindsight’s crew initially doesn’t trust their stowaway, and Trouble spends much of the book pretending to be a human boy and concealing their shape-shifting abilities. However, amid midnight snacks with Captain Astra, strategy games with the gruff lizardian Reetha and vegetarian meals with tusked cargo manager Telly, Trouble and the crew begin to bond. As Trouble's relentlessly good nature wins everyone over, a sweet and natural family dynamic forms.

Trouble’s ability to shape-shift makes them a wonderful and entertaining narrator. They take many forms throughout the book, and each results in a new set of senses and spectrum of emotion. They evocatively describe navigating by smell while in rat form and surviving the vacuum of space in the form of a blob of goo. They’re also quick to point out the quirks of the human form, such as the way human eyes leak water when they’re miserable. Trouble’s shape-shifting also introduces unpredictability to the book’s many action scenes, as they find themselves in a range of high-stakes situations that can only be solved through the clever use of Trouble’s ability. Escapes, chases and one fantastically elaborate heist keep the plot moving at a thrilling pace.

Trouble is skeptical when Captain Astra tells them that the stars sing if you "know how to listen." But as they learn more about themself and the universe, their remarkable empathy helps them discover endless ways to listen, to see and to connect with others. Trouble in the Stars is a hilarious and heartwarming look at what it means to be human, have a home and hear the stars sing.

Math. Science. Geography. These still make sense to Cora. They’re subjects with right and wrong answers, things that can be explained through reason and logic—unlike what happened to her sister, Mabel. In Newbery Honor author Jasmine Warga’s The Shape of Thunder, 12-year-old Cora and her former best friend, Quinn, are dealing with the repercussions of the day Quinn’s older brother brought a gun to school and killed four people, including himself and Mabel. Can Cora and Quinn heal their friendship after something like that? Or, better yet, can they actually change the past?

It’s been a year since the tragedy. Cora spends most of her time participating in Junior Quiz Bowl, meeting with her therapist and pushing her father to learn more about their family’s Lebanese heritage. Quinn spends most of her time alone. No one wants to talk to her, and her parents barely speak anymore, except to fight. When Quinn sends Cora a mysterious box on her birthday, it contains a glimmer of potential—to make things right, to rewrite what happened.

Alternating between Cora’s and Quinn’s perspectives, The Shape of Thunder provides a heartbreaking yet hope-filled look into two lives that have been forever altered by an act that neither of them committed. As they are drawn back together by their curiosity about and eventual belief in the possibility of time travel, Warga offers glimpses of the deep friendship Cora and Quinn used to share. Grief, anger, blame, fear and confusion swirl inside them both, and Warga excels at depicting how each girl experiences their emotions differently. Cora can’t eat pizza anymore because it reminds her of all the times she and Mabel ate it together, while formerly obedient Quinn takes a forbidden shortcut through the woods to get home from school each day because following the rules no longer seems important.

Moving and beautifully written, The Shape of Thunder is an important book that will push readers to consider what they would do in an impossible situation, and how far they would be willing to go to change it.