Middle Grade Books for Teens

615 middle grade books for teens, sorted by rating — page 7 of 7.

WILD FOR AUSTEN

the insights offered here, but as was the case in her biography of Austen’s contemporaries and fellow authors Jane and Maria Porter (Sister Novelists), Looser aims her work at the general public with a breezy, conversational tone, even as she flourishes her credentials as an Austen expert. Part 1 retells the plots of each novel, including unfinished ones and unpublished juvenilia, spotlighting Austen’s use of “wild,” “wildly,” and “wildest” and carefully explaining different connotations. Elizabeth Bennet’s muddy appearance after a brisk walk is described by the censorious Mrs. Hurst as “almost wild” (i.e., savage), while its more common use is as a synonym for “eager”\u003B the young people in Persuasion are all “wild to see Lyme.” “Wildly” and “wildest” turn up most often in Sense and Sensibility to underscore Marianne’s dramatic nature. The focus on word use gets tedious, but in Part 2 Looser applies the notion of wildness more broadly to describe the adventures of Austen’s relatives—an aunt was tried for a capital felony, a cousin was married to a French count executed during the Reign of Terror—to make the point that, however quiet the writer’s life was, she had plenty of secondhand knowledge of the wider, wilder world. Part 3, “Shambolic Afterlives,” gets weird with chapters on Austen’s ghost, Austen erotica, and Austen films that were never made, but Janeites of an undemanding nature will enjoy it all."

This clever YA romance cleverly reimagines the world of Jane Austen for a modern audience, transplanting the wit and social machinations of Regency England to a chaotic wilderness survival reality sh...

WILD GIRL

a young “Wild Man” who’s “one of the forest dwellers, devoted to the old gods, guardians of the wandering unicorn herd.” Soon, they’re joined by his unicorn companion. As it turns out, legends about virgins being able to lure unicorns are true\u003B the next day, Helaine summons the unicorn to cleanse contaminated water, and her thankful father proclaims the forest safe for unicorns and Wild Men. But his adviser, Father Robert, has other plans for the girl, whom he needs to facilitate a unicorn hunt. Spicer’s novel is a captivating, folkloric tale about freedom, loyalty, betrayal, trauma, and religious zealotry. Over the course of the story, Helaine proves to be a compelling protagonist as she forms a mutual friendship with and attraction to the Wild Man\u003B she also realizes that Father Robert is an abusive hypocrite and reclaims her agency. The narrative can feel slow and unfocused at times, but many readers are sure to enjoy Spicer’s dreamy, evocative prose: “The unicorn appeared to glide along, at one moment part of the darkness, the next a pale wraith, blending against the silvered tree trunks.”"

Born at the end of the 1930s depression, New Zealander John Broomfield began a lifetime of travels as an infant that took him to every corner of his rugged homeland and ultimately around the world. Readers of his first memoir, Carried on Great Winds, admire his capacity to combine radical political

WILDCATS

their teacher Ms. Benitez, who informs them that they’re part of a group known as the Hunters of Chaos, the girls become embroiled in an apocalypse\u002Daverting conflict with villains who also have ties to Temple Academy. A straightforward adventure with solid pacing and strong, stylish characters exuding girl power with every step, this is an accessible and fun graphic novel for less\u002Dseasoned comics consumers. After all, it’s pretty tough to resist a crew of friendly\u002Dfaced big cats splashing around in ponds, exploring a centuries\u002Dold temple, and lunging at bad guys with pointy\u002Dclawed paws. Mina’s flirtations with a boy she likes, her clashes with members of a snooty clique, and her insecurities about belonging (though her parents are alumni, they struggled to scrape up the money for her tuition) add further dimension. "

This action-packed sports novel follows a high school basketball team's journey from underdogs to championship contenders, capturing the intensity of teenage athletics with authentic play-by-play act...

WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

Tamsin, a psychology Ph.D. student who like him is a child of ambivalent privilege, and they get entangled, erotically and otherwise. They soon encounter an enigmatic quasi\u002Dprotege of Bolling, Braeem Shaka, leader of an upstart Creole political movement that seeks reparations and is viewed as a threat by the governor. Eventually, Shaka becomes a hunted outlaw, and Emil finds that he has been drafted by the absent Bolling into being Shaka’s protector—a role into which he recruits Tamsin. The result is a novel of dreamy indolence and big ideas: When and where will Emil find himself when at last he emerges from the haze of uncertainty, when he decides who and what and where he’s going to be? Novels of passivity and bewilderment are hard to make work, but Terry does a nice job of dramatizing the lives of young intellectuals adrift in a chaos of possibilities."

This gripping espionage thriller plunges readers into the morally complex world of Cold War intelligence, where every ally could be a double agent and truth is the most dangerous weapon of all. The n...

WILL EISNER

Irish toughs for being Jewish, Will Eisner found refuge in books. “There are ways to escape,” read the words above cartoonist Mazur’s sepia\u002Dtone illustration of a New York Public Library bookmobile. “Places where the new kid is always welcome.” A youthful dreamer, Eisner soaked up classic adventure stories set in far\u002Doff lands. “And then there’s the kind of literature they don’t have at the library,” writes comics historian Weiner. “You want this old pulp book? I’m done with it,” says a neighbor in the Bronx, handing the boy a copy of Black Mask magazine, a man on the cover menacingly pointing a gun. Young Will was dazzled by the action. In little time, he fell in love with drawing, taking after his father, Sam, a set painter who worked at, among other venues, the Yiddish Art Theatre in Manhattan. Thus began a fascination with cartooning that ultimately made Eisner a legend in the field—the comic industry’s annual Eisner Awards are named in his honor. Not that Eisner didn’t struggle to achieve success. Early on, his mother, Fannie, wasn’t thrilled that there would be two struggling artists under one roof. “Can you buy groceries with art?” she asks. Eventually, the answer, for Eisner, was yes. He got a job at the New York American newspaper, published his first professional work in 1936, opened a studio with Jerry Iger, and achieved great popularity with his masked detective hero the Spirit, whose dark style was inspired by German cinema. Comics aficionados also remember Eisner for Joe Dope, a character he created for the Army during World War II. The “bumbling private,” Weiner writes, taught soldiers proper procedure “by doing everything wrong.” There was little, it seems, that Eisner did wrong in his storied life, and fans of his—old and new—are all the richer for his captivating work."

This graphic biography offers young readers a vibrant introduction to the pioneering creator who transformed comic books into a respected art form. Through dynamic illustrations and accessible storyt...

WILL THERE EVER BE ANOTHER YOU

Genre

This poignant exploration of identity and legacy invites young readers to ponder their unique place in the world through lyrical prose and thoughtful questions. The narrative gently guides adolescent...

WISH I WAS A BALLER

sports journalist Shah, a ninth grader pursues his passion in the face of familial expectations pushing him toward a medical career, while also navigating the perils of high school social life." />

This energetic picture book captures the universal childhood dream of athletic stardom through rhythmic, basketball-inspired verse that will have young readers bouncing along. The narrative follows a...

WITH STARS IN HER EYES

her family as a child performer on the Christian music circuit, as well as her divorce from a blackmailing manipulator from the same community. The two women start bonding over romance novels and art, with their chemistry strengthening over months of intimacy. But Courtney is hiding her past, which eventually spills out as expected. The novel is conscious of its own genre, and as the two women talk books, they make references to plot elements like the slow burn and the third act breakup, which Burke then dramatizes, not always well. We also get the requisite assortment of best friends and small\u002Dtown quirky characters as well as the villainous ex and some charming episodes, such as a date in a field at night. The adherence to rom\u002Dcom tropes and types could make for easy reading, but a narrative that alternates between Thea and Courtney’s first\u002Dperson points of view, plus Courtney’s many names and personas, can be difficult to follow. "

This powerful coming-of-age novel follows a teenage astronomy prodigy navigating the complex constellations of first love, family expectations, and her own brilliant future. The protagonist's passion...

WITHOUT FEAR

William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, advocating equality for all. Aretha B. McKinley, at the time the only Black female lobbyist on Capitol Hill, organized an “avalanche” of letters in 1960 to prove to skeptical lawmakers that Blacks supported civil rights legislation. And Mary Church Terrell, the daughter of formerly enslaved parents, traveled to Zurich in 1919 for the International Congress of Women. Many of these women merit a book of their own."

This gripping thriller plunges readers into a high-stakes world of espionage and survival, following a resourceful protagonist who must outwit a shadowy organization. The narrative moves at a relentl...

WOLF BELLS

this responsibility. James is nonverbal, requires diapers, and has specific dietary needs, which is to say, he needs a lot of support. Understanding this, the residents of the Island of Misfit Toys that is Caz’s community offer Nola and James safe harbor as best they can. From the first sentence, you know you’re in the hands of a novelist with the ear of a very good poet. More than that, Zumas seamlessly balances the novel’s lyricism with character building, backstory, and forward momentum. Sometimes the bickering among the residents devolves from comic relief into schtick, but other than that, this novel is a delight to read. It stands out as a book that features the interior voices of children, middle\u002Daged women, and an elderly woman with equal verve. Zumas also finds a way to capture the way James experiences the world with creativity and care. The ensemble comes together to great effect."

This supernatural mystery plunges readers into a world where ancient family secrets and the chilling call of the wolf collide, blending coming-of-age drama with pulse-pounding paranormal suspense. Th...

WOUND MAN

multiple associations with contemporary writings, characters, and their associated visual culture.” After the creation and popularization of the printing press, Wound Man found further life in the print sphere and was often simply used as an aesthetic illustration “for mass appeal as a pan\u002DEuropean visual phenomenon.” Hartnell’s revelatory research and plethora of macabre illustrations make the book an unexpected treasure: It shines as both a morbid medical history and a curious record of the early years of information graphics."

This chilling medical history book explores the fascinating and gruesome world of medieval and Renaissance surgery through the lens of its most iconic teaching tool. Young adult readers with a taste ...

YOU ARE THE DETECTIVE

threatening anonymous letters to 19 Tootley Row, the Mayfair house of “artist and sometimes poet” Ambrose Belvoir, another letter urges a neighboring tailor to summon the police immediately to a murder scene. That’s quite a surprise to Belvoir and his guests, who suddenly realize that one of their number, American novelist Roy Peterson, hasn’t just dropped off to sleep\u003B he’s been stabbed to death by an icepick. But every one of the remaining guests—actress Vita Simpson, naturalist Lord Alfred Chomley, race car driver Felix Darlington, telephone operator Mabel Hickney, and cook Cloris Adder—swears that they didn’t approach the famously antisocial Peterson and that they didn’t see anyone else approach him, either. If no one laid a hand on him, how did he meet his end, and why? The novelty here is that instead of unfolding their whodunit in straightforward prose, the authors present a scrapbook of floor plans, black\u002Dand\u002Dred drawings of the crime scene and the suspects, newspaper clippings, transcripts of interviews with DCI Harold Jensen, and a climactic confession that makes the impossible murder look so easy that readers who haven’t figured it out already are likely to feel cheated. The forgettable characters are little more than cartoon types, but that’s entirely appropriate to their mode of presentation. A more serious criticism is that all those pictures contain remarkably few clues."

This interactive mystery book plunges young readers directly into the action, casting them as the primary investigator tasked with solving a series of cleverly constructed cases. Each puzzling scenar...

YOUR NAME HERE

Helen DeWitt? I was talking to Johnny Depp and he loves it, he’d love to work with you, what are you waiting for?”), and on DeWitt and Gridneff’s attempts via email to wrestle down whatever the hell their collaboration is supposed to yield. Call it high\u002Dpomo hijinks, where the story gives way to layered language, graphics, and meta\u002Dreferences (“And then there’s the engagement of the characters with Arabic, something that would have been unthinkable fifty, even ten years ago”)\u003B though, as if in a nod to traditional form, there is a surprise plot twist that relieves Rachel of her preoccupations. To call the book experimental is to understate, however, as Gridneff brightly notes late in the text, only if one isn’t up on “those 18th\u002Dcentury prepostmodernist time travellers Sterne and Diderot.”"

This interactive guide offers young readers a creative toolkit for exploring identity and self-expression through the simple yet profound act of naming. The book cleverly uses the concept of a name a...

YVES SAINT LAURENT AND PHOTOGRAPHY

art historians, curatorial specialists, and museum staff testify to Saint Laurent’s intimate relationship with photography. “My greatest asset,” he once remarked, “has been the eye I have for the time I live in and for the art of my time.” As Christoph Wiesner, director of the Arles Photography Festival, observes, for Saint Laurent, “working with photographers was a means of exploring his own limits, of giving his clothes another life beyond the purely material one.” Saint Laurent had been assistant to Christian Dior at the time of Dior’s sudden death in 1957\u003B immediately, he was thrust into the public eye, with critics and fashion doyennes alike anticipating his creations. From his first show, in 1961, his evolution as a designer was documented by photographers who included some of the most famous names in the field: Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, William Klein, Lord Snowdon, Horst P. Horst, Inge Morath, Cecil Beaton, and Annie Liebovitz, all represented here. His models, too, were renowned: Audrey Hepburn, Twiggy Lawson, Jean Shrimpton, Paloma Picasso, Catherine Deneuve, among many others. He was much photographed himself, with portraits revealing a well\u002Dcurated “cool masculinity” as well as changes in dress, hair style, and affect—most notably in 1971, for the launch of his men’s fragrance, when he posed nude, his long hair tousled, wearing nothing but his signature black glasses."

This visually stunning exploration of Yves Saint Laurent's relationship with photography offers young fashion enthusiasts an intimate look at how the legendary designer collaborated with photographer...

ZACHARY

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This powerful historical novel plunges readers into the harrowing experience of a young boy named Zachary whose world is irrevocably changed by the global conflict of World War II. The narrative vivi...