Matchmaking Is For the Dog(s): The Love Pug by J. J. Howard

Cupid has special powers.

Not only is Emma's pampered pet pug Cupid adorable, but he seems to have a penchant for spotting potential couples and special powers in bringing them together.

It was the only explanation for what happened.

My best friend Hallie had been walking to Annie's house with me, complaining about the cool weather.

"How come you're so grumpy?" I asked her. Just then Cupid began barking excitedly at a teen-aged boy who was pulling a chair out of a moving van next to Annie's house. Cupid dashed straight for the boy, who picked him up.

Cupid started giving the boy big sloppy licks. "I'm Mateo," the boy laughed, turning to Hallie and Emma. Mateo was very tall and very cute!

Annie came out and ran to help corral Cupid, and he immediately started giving her big licks, too.

Annie looked up at Mateo. I swear the look on her face made it look like she'd just been struck by lightning.

I could almost swear Cupid winked at me!

Surely not, Emma thought. But then when Emma's favorite teacher, Ms. Bates, meets her dad, a widower for eight years, the same sort of thing happened. Now Emma wonders if all this matchmaking really is Cupid magic.

And as Ms. Bates ("Call me Amy when we're not in school") and her dad spend a lot of time together, Emma begins to believe in Cupid's magical powers, and decides to use them. And as the Valentine's Dance grows near, she decides to use Cupid to bring her friend Hallie and Mateo's younger brother Frankie together so that he will ask her to the dance. She arranges clever cute-meets, all of which don't quite come off, and in fact, leaves Emma with almost everyone mad at her.

I realized at that moment that I had been totally, completely, especially Clueless about everything!

I had to give myself a makeover. A Better Person Makeover!

Playing Cupid is for the dogs, Emma learns in J.J. Howard's The Love Pug: A Wish Novel (Scholastic Books), a doggy tale of seventh-grade romance with more twists and turns than a happy pug, giving middle-school readers a reason to laugh at romance as they hopefully learn that it's best to leave romance with its own mystery, sans magic. Still, everyone has a date for the dance in this lighthearted look of affairs of the heart. Other books in the Cupid the Pug series are Pugs and Kisses: A Wish Novel, Sit, Stay, Love: A Wish Novel, and Pugs in a Blanket: A Wish Novel.

Cherchez La Femme! Hug It Out! (Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce

Big Nate, the middle schooler class slacker, is plugging his way through sixth grade, complaining that his teacher Mrs. Godfrey's loud voice is keeping him from sleeping in class. And that's not ALL! His friend Francis is still a fount of annoying trivia facts, his grandparents volunteer to chaperone the field trip to the museum, and the class pet, Sherman the Hamster, is still sulking sarcastically under his shavings.

"YOU'RE SO LUCKY, SHERMAN. YOU DON'T HAVE TO GO TO SCHOOL LIKE WE DO.

NO TESTS, NO HOMEWORK, NO SCREAMING TEACHERS..."

(AND A 4-YEAR LIFESPAN.
SHUT UP, KID.)

Big Nate gets to catch up on his napping when he gets beaned in a baseball game, but then Mrs. Godfrey does more than keep Nate from snoozing in class. His conference with her scares him sleepless!

"I'M SURE YOU'RE AWARE, NATE THAT YOU'RE IN DANGER OF NEEDING TO ATTEND SUMMER SCHOOL. I'D SAY SOME TUTORING IS IN ORDER BEFORE THE FINAL EXAM.

I'LL SELECT YOUR TUTOR."

And so Big Nate finds his fate is in the hands of his arch-nemesis, GINA, the most annoying know-it-all in the class. Will a late spring cram session save Big Nate's summer?

Against the odds, his tutor Gina pulls it off and Big Nate makes a 94 on the final exam. School's out and Nate is free to be... a summer slacker!

But fate steps in at... of all places, at the amusement park, where Francis loses his lunch on the UPCHUCKER, and Nate finds himself paired on THE FLAMETHROWER with a girl--a girl he's never seen before... and...

SHE'S WICKED CUTE!

Big Nate is IN LOVE, but the cute girl disappears into the crowd before Nate can even find out her name, and now his summer vacation suddenly has MEANING and PURPOSE, in Lincoln Pierce's Big Nate: Hug It Out! (Volume 21) in his mega-popular graphic book series. Although Pierce's cartoon books are categorized as light humorous fare for middle readers, his comic skills have  gained plenty of more mature followers as well, continuing his best-seller status---along with those other hit cartoon graphic series, Dav Pilkey's The Adventures of Captain Underpants: Color Edition and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Diary of a Wimpy Kid 1). Share this one with Pierce's latest, Big Nate: Blow the Roof Off! (Volume 22) and Big Nate: The Gerbil Ate My Homework (Volume 23).

It Wasn't Easy: A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramee

Shayla thinks she knows how to stay out of trouble at school. She tries to camouflage her "big ol' forehead" that Steph makes fun of. She follows the rules, does her work, and keeps a low profile in her classes.

She finds an escape from her fears at lunch at their special table outside with her long-time friends, Isabella, who is Puerto Rican, and Julia, who is Japanese-American. They call themselves "The United Nations," and try to stay out of the cliques that are beginning to separate students into ethnic groups in seventh grade. But Shayla notices that Julia is beginning to choose the Asian kids sometimes at lunch and fears she will be left alone if Isabella changes, too.

But then Shayla allows herself to recruited for the girls' track team. She likes running, but the all-Black team seem to be a clique of their own. Clearing the hurdles is hard to master, and Shayla fears being excluded if she fails the team.

And middle-school romance seems to be breaking up old friends. Shaya finds herself in her first crush for the smooth, green-eyed Jace, while being pestered by Tyler, who keeps trying to talk to her in the halls on the way to class. "Talking" is the first stage of seventh-grade romance, and when at the dance Tyler uses a prank game of "Command" to give her a big, sloppy kiss, Shayla feels humiliated. Her friends are embarrassed for her, but distant. Tyler won't leave her alone, and his girl cousin threatens her for trying to avoid him. Shayla's strategy of going along to get along isn't exactly working. Why is seventh grade so hard?

But when two innocent black people are shot by the police, Shayla's low-profile persona is shattered, and she finds herself wearing the Black Life Matters armband and demonstrating outside of the school, and when Principal Trask demands she remove her armband, Shayla points out that there is no mention of armbands in the school dress code and refuses.

Sometimes being in trouble for the right cause is the right thing to do, in Lisa Moore Ramee's A Good Kind of Trouble (Balzer and Bray, 2019). First-time author Ramee' manages to capture a time when young people are forced to choose the inconvenient truth over personal comfort, and in this coming-of-age story the author has her fainthearted protagonist learn to take risks, clearing the hurdles, and journaling her character's personal progress toward finding the self she wants to be.

Publishers Weekly's starred review puts it this way: "Ramée effectively portrays the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement and the difficulty of navigating complex social situations while conveying universal middle school questions about friendship, first crushes, and identity. Shay’s journey is an authentic and engaging political and personal awakening.

Another Perspective:Notorious by Gordon Korman

"It's amazing how everything seems different when you look at it from another prospective."

If anyone ever had a different perspective suddenly imposed on him, it's Keenan. From an exiting life as globe-trotting expatriate with his mom and step-dad, Keenan suddenly finds himself ill with an acute case of tuberculosis, removed from friends, school, his Shanghai high-rise apartment a free-run of the city to recover with his dad on an oddball island in the middle of the St. Clair river, which boasts only a lighthouse set smackdab on the border between Canada and the U.S.

Forget Shanghai, where Mom and Klaus teach at an international school. My dad made a huge stink that I had to come back to the States for my treatment. So here I am, shivering with a low-grade fever under a blanket in his backyard, staring at Canada.

I can't even watch TV, because Dr. Sobel wants me outside in the fresh air. Lifting a paper clip takes all the energy I've got.

But Keenan's boredom is broken by a surprise visitor, a girl who crawls out of the bushes with a too-cute cocker spaniel and starts interrogating him. She says her parents, "a couple of old nerds", named her Zarabeth for someone on Star Trek but he can call her ZeeBee. Keenan's not sure he wants to call her anything, but at least a talk with her and her spaniel Barney Two are, at their worst a break in his boredom. And talk is what ZeeBee does, as she tells him all about the island, "the gangster capital of North America," famous for nefarious Prohibition-era gangsters of the 1920s who lived there--Al Capone, of course, and and Machine-Gun Ferguson, famous for successfully hiding a fortune in gold bars on the island. Zeebee even confides that the house she lives in was once the mansion of Machine-Gun himself and that she is 100% convinced that a gang of gold hunters is surveilling their house and stalking her family.

"I'm 100% convinced that ZeeBee is a certified nutcase."

Keenan is really more interested in ZeeBee's sweet and devoted dog, whom she seems to hate, and she explains that her real dog, the original Barney, was despised by the entire island for his misdeeds and was murdered, a crime she is dead set on exposing.

However, as Keenan recovers, he finds himself a sidekick in ZeeBee's case, joining her in sleuthing out the many citizens whose property her late bad dog Barnie has destroyed to pin his murder on them. But when one night when Zee's family is out, they return to find their house "tossed" (as her Canadian border officer father terms it), and Keenan realizes that Zarabeth has been right all along--that there must be a gang of crooks still hoping to find Machine-Gun Ferguson's treasure trove. And cleaning up her living room, the two discover the key to a map of the island, on which, when placed just so in the room, a beam of sunlight points to the site of Machine-Gun's golden hoard.

It's quite an absorbing detective tale of purloined gold, canine assassination, and ruthless treasure seekers confronted in the dead of night in Gordon Korman's comedic middle-school sleuth story, Notorious (Balzer and Bray, 2020), in which the veteran author offers a satisfying tale of friendships made and lost and made again in a fireworks-filled cliff-hanger, a story fittingly written for a main character split from his old life and an island divided by an international border.

"In the end, what's a border, really? A white line some guy painted long ago. Big deal."

Gprdam Korman is a slick writer in the best sense of the term, one who consistently turns out polished middle-school novels that are simultaneously funny and yet meaningful. He is also the author of the top-selling Schooled, The Unteachables, Ungifted, and Masterminds.

Says School Library Journal"... "A diverting read full of suspense and historical intrigue.”

#Everyone Counts! Count Me In by Varsha Bajaj

Chris Daniels and I are like separate planets orbiting in the same galaxy. Like Venus and Earth, we are next door neighbors.

We've been in the same school since I moved to the neighborhood in third grade.Then, of all the crappy karma, there he is, in seventh grade, in five out of seven of my classes. And Chris was a witness to one of the worst moments in my middle-school life.

In sixth grade Karina and her friend Ashley call the boys "hyenas" because they single out the people they picked out to embarrass on the bus ride home, which seemed to bring out that notorious middle-school meanness.

Quinn, or Hyena 1, said, "Let's make a list of the girls with the hairiest arms."

Together the hyenas said, "K Chops."

I, Karina Chopra, was the only one on the list.

But when Karina's grandfather comes to live with them, he volunteers to tutor seventh graders in math after school, and Karina finds herself getting to know Chris Daniels as the two become friends. But walking home from school, sharing a bag of berries and laughs with her grandfather and Chris, the three are suddenly approached by a man with a knife. He goes up to Chris.

When this guy first approaches he touches my hair in a strange way. He asks me if I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be?

Alarm bells ring. My heart pounds when he calls Mr. Chopra nasty names. Then he turns on me, pushes me down. When the monster pushes Mr. C. down, I wince as I hear his body smack the ground.

"Terrorists don't belong here," the man says, and gives Mr. C. a kick.

Karina's grandfather has a fractured leg and is in intensive care at the hospital, and as they pray for his recovery, Karina decides to fight back against racism. She returns with her camera to the place where the attack occurred:

Mr. K's Ghandi-style glasses are shattered on the street. One of his sandals lies there, too. The berries we were eating are strewn all over. The burst strawberries look like splattered blood.

With a green chalk Karina draws a heart around that spot and makes a photograph that she posts on social media with the hashtags #HateHasNoHomeHere and #CountMeIn.

There are some hate mails, but Karina's messages go viral, and the community rallies to support her family, in Varsha Bajaj moving account, Count Me In (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2019). Writing without sensationalism, author Varsha Bajaj, tells the story of a hate crime in straight-forward prose, allowing her characters Karina and Chris to tell the story in alternating chapters that reinforce the hopeful message that discrimination and hate based on national origin has no place among American citizens. At a time when immigration is a point of contention, this novel tells the story from the point of view of both narrators and the courage of others who unite behind them.

“Compassionate, relatable characters. The story celebrates resilience, the power of community, and even the benefits of social media during a time when hate crimes against the Indian Diaspora are on the rise. Karina's message, that we are stronger together, will easily resonate with readers,” says Booklist's reviewer.

Schemework Teamwork: Benchwarmers by John Feinstein

"Got cut, huh?" Arlow said. "I don't know why you bothered. The only reason you were even out there was that Block forced Coach J to let you try out. There was no way he was going to keep a girl on the team."

"Who told you that," Andi said, looking at the smirking Arlow.

"Coach told my dad," he said. "He also told him not to worry because you weren't going to make the team."

Now Andi was really angry. "I was good enough to be on the team and you know it," she said.

"We don't need anyone on the team who bursts into tears the minute things get tough, do we?" Arlo said.

"You see me crying, Arlow?" Andi said. "You were the biggest whiner out there."

Now that Merion Middle School has a sixth-grade soccer team, Jeff Michaels decides to try out, along with one girl who doesn't want to be relegated to field hockey, the only outdoor sport offered sixth-grade girls. Principal Block has no problem with a girl on the "boys'" sixth-grade team, but he defers to Coach Johnson, who believes a girl on the team will keep the boys from bonding.

Jeff thinks Coach J is being unfair, and he knows what to do about it. His dad is the top sports reporter on the local television station, and when he brings a full film crew to their first game, the story is picked up by the network and goes viral nationwide.

But It's not exactly a win for Andi, who, along with newcomer Jeff, is put on the team but relegated to riding the bench except for the five minutes mandated for all team members. But as the season progresses, Jeff's skills develop and Andi proves herself worthy, a player whose skills are clearly outstanding, but which also mesh well with those of superstar Arlow. Still, Coach J subs everyone fairly, except Jeff and Andi.

Jeff's crime was twofold. He was Andi's friend and his father's son.

Andi was different. She'd only done one thing wrong: being born a girl.

As the season moves on, Andi manages to get more playing time and continues to score and freely assists others in scoring, and as they approach the playoffs, Coach J is forced to reconsider his opinion on girls and soccer. In the hands of the best-selling sports writer and novelist John Feinstein, his recent Benchwarmers (The Benchwarmers Series)(Farrar Strous Giroux, 2019) features his trademark mix of exciting gameplay, believable dialogue (eschewing profanity) and a wide range of characters, from the burly bully Arlow to the game Jeff and the tenacious Andi. A solid sports novel by a top-selling author of fiction and nonfiction for adults and middle readers with plenty for both girls and boys to enjoy. Says Booklist,"...engaging characters and ... in-depth play-by-play sports action that results in a fun, fast-paced story that will appeal to readers who can't get enough sports fiction."

Me, Too! Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee

"Circle of Friendship! Ooh, that's perfect, Mila!" said Zara.
"HAPPPYYY BIIIRRTHDAAAY!" Zara shouted. She pulled Omi inside the circle. "Birthday hug! Everyone in!

The four of us crowded into the O and threw our arms around each other. "Okay, this is great, but promise you won't sing "Happy Birthday!" Omi was giggling.

"Sorry, Omi. It's required by headquarters," Zara replied.

We were just up to "Happy Birthday, dear OOOO-mi!" when something brushed my shoulders. A hand.

Suddenly we were surrounded by the basketball boys--Callum, Leo, Dante, and Tobias. Now the song was over, but the hug was still happening, Callum's hand clamping the fuzz of my green sweater. I wriggled my shoulder, but Callum's hand was squeezing. And not leaving.

Something is different in seventh grade. Zara just shrugs at the too-long birthday hug and says it was sweet, but in band class Mila feels Callum's hand sliding across her shoulder. And a few days later, something else happens.

"Mila! Today's my birthday!" Leo smiled, a cute-boy sort of smile.
"We all hugged Omi for her birthday," said Dante. "Zara hugged Leo five minutes ago. On the bus."

"Okay, fine." I said, pretending to laugh. I walked over to Leo, threw my arms around him and squeezed once. "Happy birthday."

Then Mila finds out that it was not Leo's birthday at all. She feels weird about being tricking into the hug, but Zara says it's just boy teasing. Still, in the next few days one or the other of the basketball boys pushes too close to her on the bus. Tobias abruptly hugs her on the playground and the others cheer. Zara says it's just flirting. But then, at her locker, Mila realizes that the things that have happened are not just happenstance, or teasing, or flirting, or even bullying. Still she doesn't know a word to describe what she is feeling.

That was when I felt it. Someone's hand grabbing my butt.

And then Mila finds out that all the unwanted touching is part of a game among the basketball team, all of them keeping score of their points on their phones. Mila tries talking to a guidance counselor, who advises her to ignore the boys until they grow up a little. She tries to start a conversation with her mother, who is too upset over losing her job to really focus.

Teasing? Flirting? Bullying?

Finally, at the fall band concert Callum whispers something to her that makes Mila do something dramatic which exposes the whole game, and her band teacher gives the boys' behavior a name--sexual harassment. In her latest novel, Maybe He Just Likes You (Aladdin, 2019), noted author Barbara Dee takes on that behavior. It's not an easy subject to discuss, especially in a middle-school setting, but that may be the best time to address it, at the point at which young people become more aware of each other as more than classmates.

Barbara Dee deals sensitively with those first feelings about the opposite sex, the awkwardness of seventh and eighth grade boys and girls with dealing with each other. Dee sensitively reveals the different reactions among the girls without demonizing the boys, showing how Mila and Callum, with their mutual love of music, can move toward a respectful relationship. This latest book with its varied and well-developed characters and realistic family setting offers readers a way to begin thinking about that issue for themselves.

Says Publishers Weekly's starred review, "The novel’s all-too-familiar scenario offers a springboard for discussion among middle schoolers about Mila’s experience, as well as her confusion, fear, and reluctance to discuss her situation with authority figures. Easily grasped scenarios and short chapters help make this timely #MeToo story accessible to a wide audience." 

Rowley's Revenge! Diary of An Awesome Friendly Kid: Rowley Jefferson's Journal by Jeff Kinney

ROWLEY: "I wrote the words and drew the pictures all by myself without any help from a grown-up!"

GREG: "Yeah and then totally stole my idea."

ROWLEY: "I hope you think it's good!"

GREG: "Trust me, you won't!"

Despite the many times he's played the fall guy for Greg Heffley, Rowley remains a true friend, and none of the episodes Rowley faithfully records in this new book show Greg as anything but a junior jerk, albeit not a boring one!

Greg is even a jerk about Rowley's "Journal," complaining because Rowley always forgot to draw noses on people.

But then he said my book gave him an idea. Greg said one day he gonna be rich and famous and everyone will want to know his whole life story. And he said I could be the one to WRITE it.

I said I thought that was what your journal was for, and he said it was his autobiography, but my book could be his BIOGRAPHY.

So I'm going to start this book over with a new title and now the main character is gonna be Greg. No one knows him better than ME.

That's for sure!

Greg continues to take advantage of his loyal sidekick, but in Jeff Kinney's newest entry in the his best-selling comic graphic novel series, Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid: Rowley Jefferson's Journal (Amulet Books, 2019), Rowley does make his case for being an awesome kid who knows how to be a best friend, and that perhaps against all odds, there's hope for Greg. Kirkus Reviews says "The fact that Kinney can expose new facets of his characters this deep in the series is a a credit to the property. Underneath the marketing, the movies, the bookmarks, and the merchandise, the Wimpy Kid books are about a couple of pals figuring themselves out."

Holy Horoscope! Clara Voyant by Rachel Delaney

When Clara's no-nonsense grandmother Elaine retires from her job as statistician and leaves for Florida, Clara, an equally no-nonsense girl whose idea of fine literature runs to investigative reporting, finds herself suddenly transported to a different world. With her hippie-dippy mother Gaby ensconced in a tiny apartment over the herb shop where she now works, Clara, far from her grandmother's sleek, well-kept condo, is like a fish out of water in the quaint, definitely "multicultural" area of Toronto's Kensington Market, where her mom fits in, but she, Clara, does not.

The music for "Twilight Zone" seems to have become the theme song of her new life. When her mother invites Terence and Lily, two "interesting" new friends over, Clara steels herself for an evening of what she calls pure "woo-woo." In that she is not disappointed.

"Do you know how to read the charts?" asked Terence.

"Clara swallowed. "The what?"

"Astrology," he said. "That's the study of planetary movements and alignment. What's your sign, Gaby?" he asked Clara's mother.

"I'm a Gemini. With a rising moon in Taurus."

Lily gasped dramatically. "Oh! That explains SO much!"

Terrence nodded. "On Friday nights, I have a seance at the Black Cat Cafe. Some people would like to contact friends or family in the afterworld."

"Terence has a real entrepreneurial spirit," Lily gushed. Clara didn't even have the heart to point out the pun.

Clara clings to her hope that the school newspaper will offer her a chance to shine at just-the-facts-ma'am reporting, but the ambitious senior editor Wesley, ever-clad in no-nonsense blazers, gives her the worst possible assignment--writing the regular horoscope column for the Gazette. With the help of Lily's astrology tome, Clara dutifully makes up prognostications for the signs of the Zodiac, and to her dismay, her column instantly becomes the most popular feature in the newspaper. To escape, she secretly resolves to freelance an investigative report on the middle-school's mysteriously purloined mascot, Buzzter the giant papier mache' bee.

With the help of Maeve, her new friend whose passion for drama has her auditioning for the part of a famous sleuth in the school play, the two decide to combine talents to find Buzzter and give Clara the chance to break a big story and shake her psychic charisma.

Going undercover as investigative reporter, Clara finds herself digging deep for Buzzter into the school's mulch bins, even as she fends off her following of fans who seem to believe that she has physic powers to foresee their future. Editor Wesley is thrilled with her star writer's popularity and gives her the nom de plume of "Clara Voyant."

And Clara herself can't believe that her predictions unpredictably keep coming true, despite her cynicism about all things woo-woo-ish, in Rachel Delaney's delightful novel, Clara Voyant (Penguin/Random House, 2018). Can Clara make peace with her inner psychic in her new setting? Author Delaney keeps the adolescent angst light, clever, and witty in a middle-school story that takes her heroine on a little walk on the woo-woo side. Adds School Library Journal, "Clara is an utterly likable character and readers will root for her, especially where readers enjoy a touch of the supernatural in their mysteries."

Getting By With A Little Help From My Friends! Snapstreak: How My Friends Saved My (Social) Life by Suzanne Weyn

"We're pretty sure you have a concussion," the doctor tells us. "We're going to want you to rest your brain and your eyes," the doctor adds. "The first thing is no electronics for a while."

"I can't do that!" I say. "I'm in a Snapstreak competition. My entire school is depending on me. We have to win this free concert by BBD."

"Who's BBD?" asks the doctor.

Is she kidding?? "Boys Being Dudes!" I tell her. "I'll be letting down my whole school!"

"Vee!" Dad cuts me off. "You heard the doctor!"

Eighth grade is going great until Dad drops the bomb. Vee has two great friends, Lulu (screen name Luloooney) and Megan (screen name Megawatt) and they Snapchat constantly, especially about their crushes on the boy band BBD's drummer Joe and singer Derek. But then Dad tells Vee (screen name V-Ness) that they have to move after she graduates from Pleasant Hill Middle. She'll lose her best friends and have no friends at all at Shoreham High.

"I don't want to be the new kid. I'll be shunned!"

But then fate throws Vee a social lifeline. Visiting the potential new house, she meets a cool-looking girl, Gwynneth, and they exchange Snapchat names. If she can just convince Gynneth (screen name GQB2the2ndpwr) that's she's cool enough, she will have ready-made friends at Shoreham High. And then Lady Luck, in the form of local news anchor Heather May, appears at Pleasant Hill M.S. to recruit and interview participants in a SnapStreak citywide school competition with Shoreham Middle and Pleasant Hill partnered, and with the prize a free concert by Boys Being Dudes! She videos Lulu, Megan, and Vee for the evening news spot, and Vee realizes that if she can just get Gwynneth to Snapchat with her every day, she can win the concert for her school. What luck!

And then her luck runs out. It's lacrosse day in PE, and Vee asks Megan to phone-video her scoring a goal to impress Gwynneth, but instead, Lulu's pass hits her in the head and she's grounded with a concussion at home, and even worse, ordered off her phone for weeks. But her best friends don't fail her: they get their hands on her phone and keep the SnapStreak going, pretending to be Vee messaging Gwennyth.

The plan is working great, with the girls conferring daily about what "Vee" is going to Snapchat next. Vee's real-life crush Ethan has asked her out as soon as she recovers, the SnapStreak win is in sight, and BBD concert looks like a sure thing. What could go wrong?

But Megan gets soaking wet on the way to school and has to hand Vee's phone over to Madison, who promises to keep it dry and keep up the SnapStreak. Then, when Megan gets too sick to go to school and Lulu breaks her arm, Madison passes the phone to Bella, who hands it over on to a seventh grader named Maria who wants to be part of the action, who gives it to Emmett to make a video of his band class....

"I sent that Gwyn girl a video of Rae Gonzalez playing tuba. She loved it!" says Emmett.

"Great!" said Megan. "Can I have the phone?"

"I gave it to somebody." He looks at the ceiling, thinking. "I don't remember who it was, though."

Will "friends" she doesn't even know she has come through for Vee? In Suzanne Weyn's lighthearted look at social media mania, Snapstreak: How My Friends Saved My (Social) Life (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), there's more than a little help from her friends, as all of Pleasant Hill Middle School comes through in an ending worthy of an after-school sit-com. High school (whichever one she attends) is looking pretty friendly for Vee.

Since ace authors Ann M. Martin and Paula Danziger took their joint epistolary series online with their 2000 hit, Snail Mail, No More, inventors of young teen fiction have made use of social media, and with a varied cast of characters and lots of cutesy facsimile Snapchat photos with oodles of emojis of the four main characters, this one is a quick and fun outing for even reluctant middle readers.

Different Drummer: I Am Drums by Mike Grosso

"Can you tell me why you're here?" Dr. Pullman asks. "A lunch supervisor says you hit Danny with a drumstick."

"That's not true," I say. "I hit Danny with a marimba mallet. Danny says girls look stupid playing drums. I was minding my own business practicing with my mallets, and he started saying my rhythm sucks and I ruin every song in band class."

Dr. Pullman sighs. "Well, he shouldn't have said that. But you have to learn that there are other ways to solve problems that won't land you in trouble."

That's easy for Mr. Pullman to say. I'm the only girl in the percussion section in band.

Sam is a girl who doesn't care about being popular or making the honor roll at middle school. She just wants to play drums. She hears drums in her head day and night, and during classes her hands are busy tapping out rhythms in her lap. The trouble is that the drums in band class are the only ones she gets to use.

I only asked for a drum set once. And I had the miserable luck of asking for it the day my dad came home with the news that he'd been laid off. He totally blew a gasket.

Sam fashions a make-shift drum kit, with a paperback Calvin and Hobbs for snares, two encyclopedias for the tom-toms, a fat Sunday newspaper for a crash cymbal, and two weekly newspapers for her ride cymbal and hi-hat. They're quiet, but nothing like a full drum set, and Sam's only hope of ever playing a real kit is to make the eighth-grade jazz orchestra.

Sam knows that her only chance to pass that audition is to take lessons and get to play real drums, and when she learns about Pete Murphy, the best teacher in town, she screws up her courage to ask him for lessons. She "borrows" the family lawn mower and lines up enough mowingcustomers to pay Pete thirty dollars a week, and with just a few lessons, Pete's skepticism about her talent turns to real enthusiasm.

But Sam's other problem is still there. Mr. Pullman keeps calling her parents to set up a conference about the mallet incident, and Sam keeps deleting the calls, hoping that Mr. Pullman will forget about it. Pete gives her a practice pad and Sam works at her drumming every minute she can, and Pete responds by wrangling her a spot at the Kirkwood Music School recital. And when she learns that music classes at her school have lost all funding for next year, Sam knows that Kirkwood may be her only way to continue in music. Pete promises her that she's going to wow the judges.

But then everything goes wrong. The lawnmower quits working and Sam's dad comes home from being fired from his new job to find her trying to sneak the broken mower back into the basement. And then her little brother answers the phone, and it's Mr. Pullman, not at all happy to be making his eighth call on a Saturday to reach her parents. Sam is grounded, has no way to pay for lessons and the drum set she's been saving for, and her hopes seemed to crash like out-of-tune cymbals.

From its downbeat, Mike Grosso's I Am Drums (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) is in perfect time with this story of a girl with a different drummer inside her head. Despite her drive to be the only girl drummer in her school band, Sam's story of a seventh-grader who has found her life's passion is right on the beat, one that many kids who don't exactly fit into the rhythm of middle school life will feel in their hearts.

Grosso's storytelling has both honesty and humor, riding the upbeat, keeping readers invested in Sam's struggles to find a way to follow her dreams and develop her talent against the odds.

Two crash cymbal strokes and a forte Ba-Dah-Boom, Mr. Grosso!

Making the Grade: The Scandal by John Grisham

Theo tucked himself into his sleeping bag, warm and comfortable.

He was thirteen and unwilling to grow older. The entire week had been about the future, about testing for placement in high school and the mysteries of ninth grade. Theo liked where he was in life. He loved camping, he liked his school and friends and teachers. He liked being a boy on a bike, zipping around town. If he got into trouble his excuse was always, "Hey, I'm just a kid."

Why couldn't a kid stay thirteen forever?

But time and tide wait for no kid, and when the ever-optimistic Theo's test score misses the benchmark for high school honors classes by one point, he finds himself unwillingly in the middle of the simmering issue of state-mandated tests and college-track exams for eighth graders. And then his best friend April drops a bomb on him.

"I have something to show you," she says. "I couldn't sleep, so I decided to do this. She reached into her backpack and removed a plain white envelope. "Just read it." Theo removed a letter:

To Dr. Carmen Stoop, Superintendent of Strattenbury City Schools

I am a concerned citizen. The rise in scores at East Middle School is very impressive. But you should know the real story, On the Saturday after the tests, a group of eighth-grade teachers met at the school and behind a locked door began replacing wrong answers with correct ones....

Suddenly, Theo finds himself in an ethical dilemma. As the son of two lawyers, the complete kid insider at the local courthouse, he has become the de facto "kid lawyer" for his classmates, but Theo can't help wishing April had never written that letter or "consulted" him about her involvement in the scandal. And when the school system examines the actual tests, they find clear evidence of substantial tampering. As the news of scandal spreads through town and the controversy widens to the validity of state testing to determine placement in classes at high school becomes fierce, April is seized with whistle blower's remorse. And yet she has a point: if cheating at East Middle can put certain students unfairly into the magic top ten percent, aren't students like Theo and herself being cheated out of the best classes and teachers at high school? Is using one test to lock the other students out of advanced high school classes even fair? And then, has an actual felony been committed by the guilty teachers?

And when Theo's parents take on the defense of the five accused teachers, the usually cheeky Theo finds himself a somewhat unwilling insider and potential witness, in John Grisham's latest in series, Theodore Boone: The Scandal (Dutton Books, 2016). Although this latest in Grisham's Theodore Booneseries lacks the danger of investigating a murder, rescuing a kidnap victim, or helping the FBI capture a killer as he did in earlier books, the subject of mandated testing is one in which his 'tweener readers have a real stake, willingly or not, and the real-world ethical dilemmas that the author lays out for Theo, the informer April, his lawyer parents, and even his friend Judge Gantry are all too real. Grisham's blithely corner-cutting young legal eagle seems to be taking a turn toward more mature ethical sensibilities as the move to ninth grade comes into sight. Still, this teen sleuth tale has the page-turning suspense that his readers require and is already a near best-seller. Will "Kid Lawyer" Theo survive a fourteenth birthday and graduation from middle school and go on to solve more cases? That's one mystery John Grisham doesn't reveal.

For middle readers who haven't yet met the irrepressible Theo Boone, the previous books in this series are Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer, Theodore Boone: the Activist, Theodore Boone: the Abduction, and Theodore Boone: The Accused. (Read my reviews here)

Ball Hog: Soccer Showoff by Jake Maddox and Margaret Gurevich

Gina Gozalez noticed the sign as soon as she approached River City Middle School--HOME OF THE RIVER CITY RAIDERS!


Gina smiled. That could be my new team, she thought. I could be a Raider!

Then her stomach tightened. River City Middle School was at least twice the size of her old school.

All I have to do is make it through the day, Gina thought. Then I can go to soccer tryouts.

After school, as she gathers with the others on the pitch, Gina is feeling lucky. The other girls are friendly, and Rachel and Lara admit that they need some new players to improve their record over last year's. Gina had been a star on her old school's team, and she hopes that if she does her best, she can make the team at River City.

Coach Grant sets pairs of girls to work on passing, dribbling, and shooting, and Gina and her partner Rachel get a special "Nice work!" from the coach when Gina's strong kicks get past the goalie. Gina knows that she is a terrible goalie, and sure enough, when it's her turn she misses most of Rachel's shots. But when the selections for the team go up the next day Gina's name is on the list. Gina is sure the Coach Grant noticed her special scoring abilities, and she can't wait to have her chance to show off what she can do as a shooter.

But in the first games, Gina doesn't get many opportunities to score. It seem like every time they take the ball downfield, one of her teammates bobbles a pass or has the ball stolen by the opponents before they have it in range for Gina to score.

Gina was frustrated. All this teamwork is slowing us down, she thought.

I wish I could just run down the field myself and score a goal.

And with her team behind in the second half, Gina gets the ball and has to make a choice.

The Tiger's defenders were closing in. From the corner of her eye, Gina saw that Lara was wide open.

From the sidelines, Coach Grant yelled, "Pass! Pass!"

But Gina took aim and kicked the ball. It curved toward the goal and sailed into the back of the net. Score!

If I can just stay on the ball, we'll definitely win, thought Gina.

And the Raider's get the win, thanks to Gina's play, but the others don't seem as excited as they should. Becca complains that Gina is not the only one on the team, and instead of praising her for saving the game, without a smile Coach reminds her that soccer is a team sport. What is wrong with these people? Didn't they want to win? Gina thinks.

At the next game, Gina is determined to try to score on her own. Despite two of her teammates signaling that they are open, Gina tries to take the ball all the way down field. This time, however, the defender steals the ball just as she gets ready to kick, and the Mariners get the goal.

Gina is benched.

"This team isn't about one person!" Coach said.

One of the significant values of team sports is teamwork, and that is the theme of Soccer Show-Off (Jake Maddox Girl Sports Stories) (Capstone Books) No matter how good she may be, Gina gets it that being a ball hog doesn't pay off in the long run--in more ways than one. Gurevich paces this sports story well, with equal time for gameplay description and personal relationships within the group. Illustrated by Katie Wood's full-page black-and-white vignettes, with a glossary and field position diagram and descriptions of soccer positions, this book offers an introduction to playing the game for young players with special attention to the indescribable essence of teamwork.

Becca sighed. "We're all on the team because, duh, we all love soccer!
"If we win, we do it together."

Gina laughed. "And if we lose, we do that together too."

Drive the Ball Home: Booked by Kwame Alexander

No one's blaming you. I'm just asking--

I'm tired of this. You're always fussing
at me for not reading your stupid dictionary.

You don't let me do ANYTHING.You take my phone,
you took my Mom,
and now you want to
take away
the last good thing
in my freakin' life--
SOCCER

Calm down, Nicholas.

NO. My life sucks.
I get bullied at school
I get bullied at home.
I HATE MY LIFE!

Nick's life had seemed like an open field and he was dribbling fast toward the goal. with the crowd chanting his name. Nick and his best bud Coby are headed for the Dr. Pepper Dallas Cup games, on opposite teams, but there together. He's in honors classes at Langston Hughes Magnet, and April has been smiling at him a lot lately.

But things begin to go wrong. His logomaniac dad hassles him daily to study his precious book, the dictionary of arcane words that nobody uses. Nick hits a dry spell in academic fervor at school. Ms. Hardwick calls him out in English for daydreaming, and the meanie twins, Don and Dean, are planning to pound him when they catch him alone.

Then Mom drops the bomb. She's going back to Louisville to take up her beloved horse training job, and it looks like she means to stay. Nick knows all that is because Dad dragged her off to a no-horse town because of his teaching job, and when he unloads on Dad, he is grounded and made miss a tournament to meet with a shrink to talk about his "problems." Nicky feels like he's gotten an unfair foul call from, like, everyone.

And then things gets worse.

Everything slo-mos...
Two crazed eyes glued to the ball.

You wind for the kick. WHACK!
POW!--Coby's kick, aiming for

the ball, finds your--THWACK!
ankle instead.

Nicky feels like he's drawn a double yellow card. He finds himself hospitalized with appendicitis and a broken ankle, while Coby heads off to Dallas. But at least Mom comes home. Maybe she'll stay, but then, maybe not.

Kwame Alexander's companion book to his slam-dunk 2015 Newbery Award-winning The Crossover, chooses another sports as metaphor in his latest, Booked (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). Alexander makes good use of the usual stuff of the middle-school novel--bullies, hard-nosed and quirky teachers, a special girl, trash talk with his sports buddy--all in unique free verse form, Nick's stream-of-consciousness thoughts--a jumble of the emotions of twelve-year-old kid as he runs up against a new game whose rules he has to learn as he goes along. Growing up is hard to do, and sometimes you get a bad call along the way, but Alexander's young heroes have got game, and in this new one, if Nick doesn't kick the winning goal, he at least learns to make that good pass that moves the ball down the field. Another winning season for Kwame Alexander.

Uneasy Is the Head that Wears the Crown: From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess by Meg Cabot

Olivia is just your average sixth-grader, average size, brown hair, hazel eyes, determined to avoid demerits from Principal Bushy.

But one day in May things change. A Lot.

No one ever told me, "In middle school Annabelle Jenkins is going to threaten to beat you up by the flagpole for absolutely no reason."

There was no reason that I could think of for Annabelle Jenkins to:

1. Knock my organizer from my arms.
2. Shove me.
3. Ask me if I think I'm so great.
4. Call me a princess.

After school Annabelle waylays Olivia and best friend Nishi scuttling for the bus, and Olivia hears something unbelievable. Annabelle is broadcasting her news to the gathering crowd.

"I heard my dad talking to her uncle, and the truth is, her dad is actually a prince. The prince of Genovia, to be exact," sneers Annabelle.

And while Olivia is reeling from that remark, Annabelle begins to act on her promise to "kick her butt." She grabs Olivia's braids and starts yanking.

At that moment I heard a woman's voice ring out. And I saw the most amazing sight.

Her Royal Highness, Princes Mia Thermopoulos of Genovia.

And princess-ex-machina, Princess Mia and her bodyguards whisk Olivia and Nishi away in her limousine, flags of Genovia flying on the front fenders, and soon the now Princess Olivia Grace Clarisse Mignonette finds herself in New York City, meeting the dowager princess, her Grandmere Grimaldi, with her own white poodle puppy and a new wardrobe, hearing the whole story of how her deceased mother had insisted that Olivia grow up in a ordinary American family. Suddenly Olivia understand why her aunt and uncle have always treated her somewhat like an unwanted orphan relative and why she had never met her globe-trotting father. A quick trip to the tiny kingdom of Genovia and a happy reunion with her royal father and his family seem like a Disney dream.

But Olivia is not quite done with Annabelle. It seems that her aunt and uncle file a lawsuit, with Annabelle's father as their lawyer, to have her returned to them, not, it appears, because they really want her, but because they need the generous stipend that her father has provided for her care. Even a real princess, it seems, is not immune to a few unhappy endings, and for a while Annabelle has to return to cope with her in-law guardians, Cranbrook Middle School and its demerits, and the tender mercies of the jealous Annabelle Jenkins.

But with a brave and strong princess like Mia Thermopolis on her side, Olivia Grace Clarisse Mignonette is sure to find her way to a pro tem happy ending, in Meg Cabot's spin-off of her best-selling books-to-movies The Princess Diaries series, her brand-new From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess (Feiwell and Friends, 2015).

Cabot deftly draws on her skills at spinning a page-turning princess tale filled with equal measures of tasty glimpses of royal privilege and plenty of suspense. Using the familiar first-person diary format, Cabot gives Olivia an engaging persona, and her well-executed blackline illustrations add to the tale-telling, leaving the reader longing for the next chapter in Olivia's story. While not exactly the dreadful Dursleys, Olivia's distant aunt and uncle are the perfect foils for the new princess' adoring royal family, and Annabelle, the mega-popular, mean girl wannabe, is an appropriately disagreeable villain.

Fluffy fantasy fun, just right for summertime reading when a girl is feeling a little bit like the unloved stepchild, Cabot's tale has got a light touch and the improbable events button pushed all the way in this one, as Olivia Grace's nemesis Annabelle gets put in her place and the stage is set for a sequel with Olivia and her BFF Nishi as junior bridesmaids in the royal wedding of her sister, Princess Mia Grimaldi, in the picturesque, pint-sized principality of Genovia.

Even middle-schoolers who once imagined themselves princesses can sometimes to be snatched away to a fairy-tale life, right? And a girl can dream, can't she? (or at least read about a dream come true!)

The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer L. Holm

Middle school is like one of those highway restrooms in the middle of nowhere. It's dirty and smelly, and crowded with strange people.

Like the goth kid. He's always in black. He has a pierced ear, eyebrow, and nose; he must set off metal detectors in airports.

When her best friend since Kindergarten splits off to bond with the volleyball girl-jock clique, Ellie feels lost in the crowd at her new middle school. It seems everyone has their thing, but Ellie is a girl who hasn't found her thing yet. And that's not her worst problem.

A tray smacks down on the table across from me.

"Can you believe this?" my grandfather demands.

He's wearing navy-blue polyester pants, a button-up shirt with tie, and a V-neck sweater with his tweed jacket. He definitely stands out, fashion-wise.

"Three dollars for a school lunch?" he says. He polishes off his corn dog in a few bites and then looks at my lunch.

"Are you going to eat that?" he asks.

I sigh and push it over.

It seems Ellie's 76-year-old grandfather, with two PhDs in biology, has discovered the genetics of jellyfish regeneration, and being dedicated to reversing aging through science, has done the first human trial on himself. It worked. But since he's now a thirteen-year-old boy, with a massive adolescent appetite and zits to boot, he has to live with Ellie and her mother. And since he's now a minor, he can't drive and he has to be enrolled in school--Ellie's middle school, unfortunately.

Riding the bus and eating lunch with a "cousin" who is her persnickety science-obsessed grandfather is hard enough. But Melvin, whose sudden disappearance as a professor emeritus and loss of access to his university lab has made it impossible for him to continue his work, is determined to get his T. Melvinius specimens and publish what he is sure will be a Nobel-prize winning discovery; and for that he enlists Ellie's help to break into his lab and steal back his jellyfish genes before they expire. But for this caper, Melvin and Ellie need someone suitably stealthy with access to a car and driver. The black-garbed goth boy, Raj, is drafted because he is smart and has an older brother with an inconspicuous car and need for additional income. Grandpa Melvin is certain that with his specimens he can continue his work that will end human aging and save the world. Persuasively, he introduces Ellie to the work of Madame Curie, Salk, Oppenheimer and Einstein, scientists whose discoveries did change human existence.

At first, Ellie is intrigued with the adventure of science--discoveries that can expand human possibilities:

"Scientists never give up... because they believe in the possible." proclaims Melvin.

"The possible?" I ask.

"That it's possible to create a cure for polio. That it's possible to sequence the human genome. That it's possible to reverse aging. That science can change the world." he says.

And I get it.

Ellie agrees to help Melvin complete his work. It is exciting to think that it is possible to end the diseases of aging. That seems like a good thing.

But as she reads more about those scientists Melvin describes, she realizes that there is more than one possible outcome from some of these discoveries. She reads Oppenheimer's words after the first detonation of the atomic bomb.

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent."

And Ellie sees what her grandfather in his passion for discovery does not--that an end to human aging would mean that the world would never be the same, in many, many ways, some not so good. She determines that she cannot be one of those who keep silent.

Three-time Newbery winner Jennifer L. Holm's just published The Fourteenth Goldfish (Random House, 2014) is a middle-school novel that has it all, comic family conflicts in which her 13-year-old grandpa tries to tell her mother how short her skirts can be, a believable middle-school social scene with all the usual suspects, action episodes of lab break-ins and car chases, and a plug for science, all entertainingly wrapped around a serious theme of looking at all the possibilities of scientific discovery. Holm's writing is light-handed, respectful while it pokes fun at its well-drawn characters, but leaving the middle reader with an introduction to what possibility really means in human life.

Publishers Weekly gives Holm's latest a starred review, and The New York Times adds "Youth, old age, life, death, love, possibilities and—oh yes—goldfish all come together in this warm, witty and wise novel."