Middle Grade Books
1. Twelve-year old Hazel has strange luck. She is a trans-Atlantic stowaway and narrates this historical fiction about a young girl sent to America to work in a factory but who instead determines to write a book about the ship on which she sails: the Titanic. Good news, bad news. The novel, Iceberg, is by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer A. Nielsen (Scholastic Press, 352 pp., hardcover) $17.99
2. An adaptation for young readers of the bestselling novel based on a true story, The Paper Daughters of Chinatown, by Heather B. Moore and Allison Hong Merrill, tells the story of a young Chinese girl sold by her father in the late 19th century to pay his gambling debts and the friend she meets in San Francisco. (Shadow Mountain, 240 pp., hardcover) $18.99
3. The Hope of Elephants is a novel told in verse about a girl who may have a genetic mutation that makes her susceptible to cancer and a scientific study of elephants in a Utah zoo that may provide a cure. The author is Amanda Rawson Hill, whose family also has that mutation. (Charlesbridge, 480 pp., hardcover) $17.99
4. When junior high school students are invited to attend a digital-only school because of a pandemic, the students take advantage of the opportunity to appear to each other online exclusively as avatars, and thereby reimagine themselves and the way they present to others. Virtually Me is written by Chad Morris and Shelly Brown (Shadow Mountain, 256 pp., hardcover) $16.99
5. Teenage Sarah becomes the caregiver of her little brother and their father after the death of her mother. While trying her best to hold everything together, she tackles a school art project about Diego Rivera and discovers her own Mexican and Guatemalan heritage. The Weight of Everything is written by Marcia Argueta Mickelson (Carolshoda LAB, 240 pp., hardcover) $19.99