Book #40 of 2026: The Ordinary and Extraordinary Auden Greene by Corey Ann Haydu Pretty much everything I could want from a middle-grade contemporary/fantasy novel. Our story follows two identical girls on the cusp of their twelfth birthdays, who magically switch places and must navigate one another’s worlds. Princess Auden is the heir to a …
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Book #31 of 2026: The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon (The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science #1) This 2024 title unfortunately hasn’t hit the mark for me, much as I love author Kate McKinnon’s work on Saturday Night Live. The …
Book #6 of 2026: The Rise of Neptune by Scott Reintgen (The Dragonships #2) The first volume in this middle-grade sci-fi series about dragons in outer space didn’t blow me away, but it was promising enough that I decided to check out this sequel to see how the cliffhanger resolved. And I guess I’m reasonably …
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Book #189 of 2025: The Last Dragon on Mars by Scott Reintgen (The Dragonships #1) A fun little blend of Ender’s Game, Red Rising, and Fourth Wing, all age-appropriate for the middle-grade audience. Dragons exist in this setting as avatars of every planet and moon, and they each choose one human rider in a generation …
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Book #151 of 2025: Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop by Joshua S. Levy This is a cute middle-grade novel about two thirteen-year-old boys who are stuck repeating their common bar mitzvah weekend over and over again. I like the distinctiveness of the two protagonists, who narrate in alternating chapters: hyperactive Finn is an …
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Book #137 of 2025: Firestorm by John Peel (2099 #6) After a couple weaker entries that passed without much action, the final volume of this middle-grade sci-fi series thankfully delivers with a bang. Everyone is scrambling to defeat the villain Devon’s terrorist threat to end all life on Earth (via a crashing ship full of …
Book #109 of 2025: Meltdown by John Peel (2099 #5) After a promising start, this middle-grade sci-fi series has stalled out in a major way, and I can only hope that the sixth and final volume manages to tap into that original sense of imaginative fun that propelled the earlier books. Just like in the …
Book #88 of 2025: Revolution by John Peel (2099 #4) This middle-grade sci-fi series stalls out a bit here, though I’m hoping the final two volumes are able to recapture the original momentum and fun. (It’s been a quarter-century since my last read, so none of this is particularly clear in my memory.) The subplot …
Book #72 of 2025: Traitor by John Peel (2099 #3) Another quick but propulsive adventure, bringing us to the halfway point of this middle-grade sci-fi series from 1999-2000. Our main hero Tristan begins this installment in police custody (thanks to innocently sharing identical DNA to his terrorist clone twin), and after dodging an attack from …
Book #47 of 2025: Ring of Solomon by Aden Polydoros (Ring of Solomon #1) [Disclaimer: I am Twitter mutuals with this author.] Overall a solid entry in the Percy Jackson genre of middle-grade fiction, where tweens battle fantastical monsters drawn from some culture’s traditional mythology (increasingly #ownvoices for the writer’s particular background, as here). In …
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