In Laura Tucker’s All the Greys on Greene Street, Ollie, a gifted artist, is content living with her artist parents in a loft in New York City. But then her father leaves for France, accompanied by a woman whom Ollie and her mother playfully nickname “Vooley Voo.” One week later, the playfulness has vanished, and Ollie’s mother will not get out of bed. Ollie strives for normalcy as she attends school, hangs out with her two best guy friends and goes to visit Apollo, her father’s partner in his art restoration business. Due to her mother’s urgent, hushed phone conversations and a desperate man who appears at their door, it becomes apparent that a mystery surrounds Ollie’s father and his departure, which coincided with the disappearance of a valuable piece of art. This is a lot for 12-year-old Ollie to puzzle out, and she becomes fiercely protective of her mother and refuses to accept the truth of her mother’s depression.

There is a beguiling naturalness to Tucker’s depiction of Ollie and her troubles. Ollie is observant and reflective, allowing the reader full access to her emotional upheaval. Her best friends are genuine and loyal but clumsy in their attempts to help. Apollo is kind but distantly adult. Perhaps the most lovely element of the book is the infusion of art: Ollie’s art, rendered in pencil drawings, is sprinkled throughout the book, and there are discussions of art technique, art in museums and, most instructively, the provenance of art displaced by war.

All the Greys on Greene Street is a poignant and well-structured debut novel that’s sure to satisfy young readers.

Debut author Chris Baron steps into the arena of children’s literature with a beautiful novel-in-verse, All of Me. Baron takes on a number of difficult forms for middle grade reading—first-person narration, a theme of self-discovery, free-verse poems—but he does so with grace.

Ari Rosensweig has just moved to California from New York. That would be hard enough to deal with, but Ari is also bullied for being overweight, and his parents’ marriage is tenuous at best. Through the course of one summer between seventh and eighth grade, Ari makes a number of changes, most of which stem from his self-loathing and issues with body image. When Ari’s mother attempts to set him on the path of controlling his diet, he finds that it can lead to internal discoveries about himself as well as external changes in his appearance, but it can’t solve all of his problems.

Baron’s free-verse poetry is immediate and lyrical, allowing us access to Ari’s thoughts and feelings in a way that prose would not. Baron’s first-person narration allows the reader to experience Ari’s pain and revelations, both of which are balanced with moments of grace and beauty. All of Me is highly recommended for readers of all ages.

Her birth certificate says Roberta Briggs, but the 12-year-old who keeps a daily birding chart and leaves out strands of hair plucked from her brush for birds to make nests with is (fittingly) better known as Birdie. The last three years have been filled with changes since her firefighter father died in the line of duty and she and her mother moved from Philadelphia to live with her great-grandma Maymee. In Eileen Spinelli’s novel-in-verse, Birdie, this spunky tween has even more big changes ahead in her small town of Hadley Falls.

In Hadley Falls, life has a steady rhythm. Birdie hangs out with her best friend, Nina, and plays Scrabble with a boy named Martin on Saturdays. Birdie’s mother works days at a diner and spends evenings at home. Her quirky grandma Maymee plans the details of her own funeral. And through it all, Birdie keeps on smiling on the outside, even if her insides don’t quite match—and she still talks to her father’s photo at night.

Birdie has started to wonder if Martin could be her first boyfriend, but with the arrival of summer, suddenly Nina and Martin are a couple, her mother is dating police officer Fred, and even Maymee puts down her coffin catalogs and picks up curlers when a new gentleman arrives at church. Realistic verse expresses the disappointment, anger and fear Birdie experiences as she worries about losing her friends, her mother’s love and her father’s traditions. Yet with time, patience and community, the resilient girl learns that friends and family help the heart grow and that moving forward in life doesn’t mean forgetting the past.

Kate Allen’s noteworthy debut novel, The Line Tender, is a big-hearted story about friendship, grief and recovery set in the 1990s. Twelve-year-old Lucy Everhart’s summer is off to an exciting start when a fisherman in her town of Rockport, Massachusetts, catches a great white shark. Lucy and her best friend and neighbor Fred are overjoyed because they’re working on a field guide of local animals for their science project, with Lucy illustrating and Fred providing scientific data of specimens they encounter, and this will be an exciting entry. But the great white stirs up memories of Lucy’s mother, a shark expert who died of an aneurysm five years ago.

Unfortunately, another tragedy strikes and kills another loved one, and Lucy and her father, a diver for the police department, are left to piece their lives together once again. Allen seamlessly weaves in intriguing facts about marine biology throughout this story, and her narration is strikingly authentic and subtly nuanced, whether she’s describing a joyful afternoon trip into Harvard Square or the painful moments when Lucy’s grief is so all-consuming that she can’t eat for fear of choking.

Lucy’s heartache does help lead her back to her mother, “whom everyone seemed to know better” than she did. She becomes engrossed in a research proposal her mother wrote just before her death to tag and study great white sharks, whose numbers seem to be increasing off the New England coast. 

A grieving Lucy is buoyed by a cast of helpful adults, including her father, a kind neighbor, her science teacher, a guidance counselor, and a number of researchers who worked with her mother, including one who says, “All life is interconnected. If one species moves away or becomes extinct, the order shifts.” Numerous middle grade books deal with grief, but few do it so beautifully―and hopefully―as The Line Tender.

Gail Shepherd’s colorful debut novel The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins takes place in 1985 in the town of Love’s Forge, Tennessee. As the story opens, 11-year-old Lyndie and her parents have lost their home and have had to move in with her grandparents.

Lyndie is an outspoken, curious girl who loves research, history and getting to the bottom of things, but her quest to discover the truth about her father’s job loss and her parents’ strained relationship isn’t easy. One thing Lyndie does know is that it’s best to keep her daddy’s habit of hiding George Dickel Tennessee Whiskey in his glove box a secret from her opinionated grandma, who isn’t so sure that her son, a wounded Vietnam vet, quite knows how to raise Lyndie into a proper young lady. As for Lyndie’s mom who’s moved into a small room alone: “When she’s not at her new job at Miller’s Department she stays holed up in that room chewing on Bayer aspirins.”

In addition to Lyndie’s troubled family situation, her best friend Dawn is dealing with the outcome of her own issues; Dawn’s family is taking in a boy named D.B. who’s just come from a reform school. Eventually, both Lyndie’s father and D.B. realize they cannot outrun their past, and that they instead must undertake the long, hard work of trying to recover.

This richly voiced story explores themes of PTSD, the hope of redemption and the importance of friends and family. Full of humor and insights, The True History of Lyndie B. Hawkins will give middle school readers much to think and talk about.

In the follow-up to her acclaimed debut, The Secret of Nightingale Wood, author Lucy Strange explores the harrowing history of England at the start of World War II through the eyes of a young, fearful girl.

Eleven-year-old Pet has grown up on the southeast coast of England with her mother, father and older sister, Mags. Her tight-knit family tends to their village’s lighthouse and has always led a quiet, happy life. But as the 1940s begin and the war moves ever closer, Pet’s beloved cliff tops turn from an idyllic place for a child to roam and play to a battleground of barbed wire and a target for bombings. As the war rages, everyone in her family seems to have a secret to hide, which strains their bonds when they need connection the most. Pet, a girl prone to freezing up in times of fear, will have to learn to be braver than she’s ever been if she hopes to untangle the mysteries shrouding her family. 

Set during one of the most momentous periods of world history, Our Castle by the Sea is a powerful novel, and the steady pace of the narrative will keep readers engrossed. Strange’s incorporation of coastal English folklore and legend adds a layer of depth to both the narrative and characters, making for a rich and immersive reading experience. At the heart of the story is Strange’s heroine, however unlikely, as well as her journey of growth and change during a time that absolutely necessitated it.

Reminiscent of both Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, bestselling children’s author Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Greystone Secrets: The Strangers is the first installment in the author’s latest intricately written and emotionally resonant sci-fi series.

When the three young Greystone siblings—Chess, Emma and Finn—hear the news that three siblings on the other side of the country who share their exact first and middle names, as well as their birthdays, were kidnapped, they can’t help but find it odd. Then, when their mom goes on a “work trip” out of town the very next day, they become even more suspicious and take the investigation into their own hands.

As they dig around the house for clues, they soon discover a coded message from their mom that leads them to a hidden room in their basement. But as they’re padding around for answers to the mysteries, the Greystone siblings accidentally find themselves in a whole different, parallel world—one that’s eerily similar to their own but strange enough to be dangerous if they don’t stay smart and stick together.

Adventures, mysteries and puzzles abound, and Haddix’s high-concept middle grade novel deftly uses her understanding of young readers’ innermost thoughts and emotions to bring her characters to life as they learn the importance of trusting themselves—and each other—in order to survive.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Margaret Peterson Haddix.