A Work In Progress: 13 and Counting by Lisa Greenwald

"So, what's going on," I ask Ari over the phone.

"Bubbie's in the hospital. They think she had a mild stroke. But listen, I think this is happening right now for a reason."

"Why?" I ask her.

"The list, our new list, more stuff just keeps coming to me."

Kaylan remains quiet and waits. I know a lot is going on inside her head right now that I know is taking some time to get out, she thinks.

"And two more items came to me totally organically," Ari says. "One is, spend more time with Bubbie... because time is precious. We never know about the future." Ari goes on... "Also, figure out how we feel about God."

It's a tall order. Approaching their thirteenth birthdays, BFFs Ari and Kaylan feel as if everything is changing beneath their feet. School is hard, and it all doesn't come easily to them anymore. Family problems make even their attempts at lighthearted fun harder to enjoy: Kaylan's father comes to visit and announces he's marrying someone she doesn't even know; Ari feels her beloved grandmother sliding toward death.

And old friendships are shifting. Ari's camp buddies are off in various directions, Kaylan's lunch-table-girls are now unpredictable, and even Ari and Kaylan find their friendship tested. Kaylan's once-upon-a-time "boyfriend" is now Ari's. How did that happen? Kaylan is thrilled to be invited to spring break at a posh resort as the guest of Cami's well-to-do family, where she soon finds she'd rather be home, hanging out with Ari. Ari finds herself moody and dissatisfied with everything.

"I don't know what it's going to be. I am just in a weird place right now."

And both of them are planning to spend most of the next summer away, Ari at her Jewish camp and Kaylan at her stand-up comedy camp.

Working their way through it all, including "The List," thirteen aspirations before the school year is over, the two best friends have to find a way to remain close through the ups and downs, ins and outs, of life, in Lisa Greenwald's third book in series, Friendship List 3: 13 and Counting (Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins, 2019). Author Greenwald keeps it real in this book, and although there are plenty of laughs, readers will find these characters coping with a period of life when they begin to realize that their own world is part of a larger world. Ari and Kaylan find a way to be themselves and best friends as well, and readers of the first two books in the series, Friendship List 1: 11 Before 12 and Friendship List 2: 12 Before 13 will want to follow these relatable characters as they navigate being both themselves and best friends.

In Their Own Words! The Class by Frances O'Roark Dowell

Ellie closed her notebook with a satisfied pat. Complete.

Hermione Granger, Fifth-Grade Muggle was ready for publication. She'd have to figure out how to publish a book, of course. Mrs. Herrera would know what to do, Ellie thought.

It's early in the school year, Mrs. Herrera is an ace teacher, and the literary Ellie thinks she's got it made in sixth grade. Except... the kids in her class are hopelessly boring.

Maybe school wasn't the place where people could be interesting, Ellie thought. Maybe it squashed the interesting right out of people.

But Ellie is wrong, sooo wrong. All the kids she thought she knew seem to have become strangers this year, behaving out of character, but fascinatingly so. For example, why was Becca, would-be teacher's pet, dumping ants and sugar in Mrs. Herrera's desk drawer? Interesting....

A trip to the library for Becca and Petra becomes an official "art room shenanigan" when they are caught giving each other pixie haircuts. Becca looks sophisticated, a bit exotic, but former social leader Petra looks like a plucked chicken, and the Vice-Principal mutters something sinister to Mrs. Herrera about being already "on thin ice." Carson suddenly invites Cami over to his house to study. Sam Hawkins, a kid who transferred in fifth grade, appears, concealed by his hoodie in the halls, on the playground, and sometimes in the classroom when the others are at lunch. Ellie's notebook disappears, with all her observations about her classmates. Kind but chubby Steffan asks Elizabeth to the dance, and she says yes. And the really arresting development--someone or someones--take three of Mrs. Herrera's "Precious Objects" from her DO NOT TOUCH shelf.

Sixth grade is anything but boring.

It's an interpersonal mystery in an semi-epistolary format, as told by each students' own accounts, in Frances O'Rourk Dowell's latest middle-grade story, The Class (Atheneum Books, 2019). Sixth grade is a time when everything seems to change, as personalities are remade and relationships re-negotiated, and the not-so-boring-after-all kids in Mrs. Herrera's class coalesce to help the quintessential outsider, homeless Sam Hawkins.

Dowell's insightful and engaging novel captures the confusing challenges of early adolescence with a variety of personalities and changing interactions, perfect for middle readers puzzled by the social scene."Read-aloud possibilities are endless for this fun mystery, which is a must for every sixth-grade classroom library," says Booklist.  And Publishers Weekly adds, "A complex, thought-provoking, and entertaining view of middle school."

Solving the History Mystery: Ghosts of War: The Secret of Midway by Steve Watkins

"Going to get started on my homework!" I yelled, grabbing my sandwich and a glass of milk. I ducked down the hall and into my bedroom, kicking the door shut behind me.

Right away, I noticed something wasn't quite right. I'd tossed the Navy peacoat on my bed when I first came home, but now it wasn't there. The hair stood up on my neck, and I got goose bumps all over.

Of course there were no such things as ghosts.

But there was somebody in my room!

I yelped when I saw him, and sat straight up. He was leaning against my bedroom door, holding the navy peacoat. He pulled something out of the peacoat pocket--an envelope.

An encounter with a ghost from World War II was not on Anderson's mind when he promised to clean up a basement storage room underneath Uncle Dex's antiques shop as a practice room for his band. But the old trunk caught his attention, and after his friend Greg left, Anderson couldn't resist opening it. Inside he found an old Navy peacoat and other dusty old military stuff. Feeling suddenly chilly, he impulsively pulled on the coat. And then he could have sworn he heard someone softly saying, "That's mine." But there was no one there, and resolving to ask his history buff uncle about the old chest, Anderson couldn't help anxiously looking behind himself as he hurried up the stairs and out to his bike.

But Anderson knows, he just knows, that the filmy figure in old-fashioned denim shirt and bell-bottoms who appeared in his room is some sort of ghost. And it seems he is there for the letter inside that smudged envelope.

"I might have written this to Betty. Betty was my girl. Way back before everything happened. About all I remember is there was a war against the Japanese and Germans, and I was on a ship. Seems like I've been wandering a long time... kinda, well, limbo is what I guess you'd call it. Then you found that coat and put it on and that brought me here."

The ghost seems to falter and soon fades, but Anderson can't stop thinking about the mystery the ghost has handed to him. He decides to enlist his friends, Greg and Julie, and Julie is eager to trace the identity of the young sailor, beginning with the letter to Betty.

With the name on the envelope's address, Julie tracks Betty down. She is in her nineties, but clearly remembers her first love, William Foxwell, who was among the many seventeen-year-olds who signed up for military service immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

And with that clue, the three history detectives are off on their mission to find out William's fate, an investigation which leads them to the Battle of the Coral Sea and on to the pivotal Battle of Midway and William's subsequent capture by the Japanese. Julie's internet searches lead them to books and finally to an elderly Japanese eyewitness of William's capture who provides the final heroic ending to William's story and the release his ghost seeks.

Steve Watkins' Ghosts of War #1: The Secret of Midway (Scholastic Press, 2014) offers appealing and believable young history detectives and plenty of exciting historical details that will encourage young readers to follow in their footsteps into the many fascinating stories of that war and the personal memories that remain of that time. Watkins' characters are thoroughly modern kids who deal with eighth-grade bullies while experiencing the details of sacrifice and death in the larger world this "ghost of war" introduces to them.

Military history buffs won't want to miss Watkin's sequel, forthcoming March 31, Ghosts of War #2: Lost at Khe Sanh (Scholastic Press, 2015). Maturing fans of The Magic Tree House books will move easily into this series, and it also promises to offer the appeal of Dan Gutman's best-selling Baseball Card Adventures which take their baseball-loving character back into the real history of the sport with such greats as Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente and Ted Williams.

Nothing Ever Happens Around Here! Codename Zero by Chris Rylander

There I was in the parking lot of my school, minding my own business, when some mysterious dude shows up and hands me an even more mysterious package. Okay, so I wasn't so much minding my own business as I was putting the finishing touches on the fourth biggest prank in Erik Hill Middle School history. But the point was the same--I was busy.

"Hey, kid," the guy said. "Take this."

Suddenly I was holding a package. "What am I supposed to....?"

"Just listen," he said, glancing over both shoulders. "Guard this with your life; the fate of the world depends on it. You must deliver this to Mr. Jensen.Trust no one."

Carson Fender is bored. Nothing ever happens in Minnow (a.k.a., Minott),  North Dakota. Or when it happens, it's the same old thing that always happens, like the annual circus with the same old tired tiger and tilt-a-whirls.

To maintain his joie de vivre, Carson is forced to carry out ever-more elaborate pranks at school, and he's right in the middle of a doozie involving a herd of fainting goats on the lawn in front of the school while his co-conspirators Dillon and Danielle use the distraction to glue down everything on every teacher's desk in the school. And then the dude in the black sunglasses appears in his life.

Now Carson can't even enjoy the chaos engendered by his prank. There's that mysterious package, in plain brown wrapper. He's supposed to deliver it to Mr. Jensen, but which one?  There are two Mr. Jensens at his school. That night Carson can't sleep until he finds out what is inside that package, but then... when he loosens the paper at one end, he triggers a warning that makes him wish yesterday had just been a regular, boring day.

YOU NOW HAVE FORTY-FIVE HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES TO INITIATE FAIL-SAFE MEASURES BEFORE SELF-DESTRUCTION.

Carson Fender discovers that his weirdo conspiracy nut friend Dillon has been right all along. Things are not what they seem in Minnow, North Dakota. Below the boring surface, literally, underground below their favorite sledding hill, is the world headquarters of The Agency, the mega-spy system from which the CIA, FBI, and NSA take their orders. The two Mr. Jensens are, of course, Agency secret agents. Carson is deputized as Agent Zero, given cool spy gear like night-vision contacts, fog shooters, and small explosive charges disguised as fruit chews, and assigned to protect a Russian twelve-year-old named Olek until his parents can testify against a ring of terrorists on trial at The Hague.

The terrorists who have infiltrated the area know Olek is in hiding in Minnow, but they don't know who he is, so Carson is given the task of making Olek look like an average North Dakota kid, invisible in the crowd of other dark-haired seventh graders. But of course, the plan goes awry, Olek is captured, and Carson finds himself on his own to save his friend ...and the world.

At least, it's not boring.

Chris Rylander's latest Codename Zero (The Codename Conspiracy)(Walden Pond Press, 2014), offers middle readers a witty and game main character who gladly exchanges seventh grade ennui for international espionage, at least until the game gets a bit more deadly than he expected. Plenty of bad-guy spies from central casting, a couple of best buddies who are up for anything, and a Russian kid who does Russky stand-up comedy like a young Sacha Baron Cohen doing Borat make for a funny and fast-moving read in the best Spy Kids tradition. Just the thing for those summertime blahs.

Chris Rylander is also the author of a comic middle-school big operator series, The Fourth Stall. Fans of James Patterson's best selling Rafe Khatchadorian Middle School series will find Rylander's books suits their common comedy core to a T.

Making the Call: Screaming at the Ump by Audrey Vernick

People always assumed I was going to be an umpire, like my dad and his dad. Or teach at their umpire school, Behind The Plate. But the thing about umpires is, if they do their job well, they aren't part of the story at all.

Not that I wanted to be part of the story. I never wanted to be a player.

I wanted to write about baseball, to report on it, to show how every game is unique.

And now I could finally get started.

It would all begin today.

For eleven-year-old Casey Snowden, starting middle school means one thing--the chance to write about sports for a newspaper. For years he's been writing up Little League games and games on television just for the fun of it, but now Casey runs up against a set of rules he didn't anticipate. On his school newspaper, sixth graders don't get to write. Period. They sell ads and do the scut work for the seventh and eighth graders who do the stories, and if they follow directions, they may get to learn to do copy editing by the year's end. For the first time in his life, Casey finds himself bucking a system of rules, arguing with the umpire, in this case, Mr. Donovan, the faculty adviser, that he should get to submit a story, any story, one that Casey has yet to come up with.

At home things are seemingly the same. His best friend Zeke is still obsessed with being a part of TV reality shows but still loyally helps him out with the jobs associated with getting the family business, Behind The Plate, the third-best of three umpire schools in the country, up and running for the month of October. Casey picks up on his father's moodiness, crediting it to the reduced numbers of this year's enrollment, and volunteers to take over the popular You Suck, Ump Day, a popular local event in which people are invited to come and harass the umpires-in-training, Zeke pitches in to help, and Casey tries to push away worries about Behind the Plate to concentrate on coming up with a sports story good enough to convince Mr. Donovan that he's a real writer.

Then Casey notices that one of their would-be umpires, who calls himself Patrick MacSophal, looks amazingly like a clean-cut version of J-Mac, baseball superstar who dropped off the sports radar when faced with clear evidence that he had taken steroids to accomplish his stats. What if this MacSophal is that J-Mac, incognito and trying to get back into baseball? That would be a sports story any magazine or newspaper would want to print, not to mention the Clay Coves Middle School paper. And then Casey overhears a muted conversation between his father and MacSophal that validates his suspicions. Casey can't understand why his dad would have anything to do with this guy, a guy who broke the big rules, the rules of fairness, but clearly Casey has a real scoop, and the article almost writes itself. Mr. Donovan can't help but be impressed by his work when he reads that story.

Donovan may be surprised by Casey's investigative reporting, but he is not impressed with his journalism.

"It's not a bad article, Casey. I'm not sure where to start. As we go through more meetings, you'll have a chance to learn a lot--about objectivity, the ethics of journalism, invasion of privacy, interviews. That's a good starting point. Given your access to this guy, I couldn't help but wonder where you got your information and why you didn't include an interview."

I was stunned.

"I recommend you interview this character. I think that would strengthen your piece considerably. You have to work hard to keep your own feelings out of the article."

Fairness and objectivity, getting into position to see the whole play, Casey thinks. Just what his dad tries to teach his student umpires every day. Maybe he's missing part of the play here. It seems he broke some of the rules of journalism because he thought they didn't apply to him, just because he wanted the result so much. But wasn't that just why J-Mac broke his rules?

Audrey Vernick's Screaming at the Ump (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2014) deals with that coming-of-age experience when a maturing character becomes aware that there is a wider point of view than he has been able to see before. In a middle-school setting with all its conflicts and humor, with a framework of struggling umpire school in New Jersey, author Verneck blends her setting and theme seamlessly to tell the story of an appealing character struggling to tell his own story in a familiar landscape that he sees changing under his own feet. What are the rules, the real Rules, and how do we apply them fairly, how do we make the right call when we're the ones who have to make it? That's the big story everyone has to write, and Casey Snowden is on his way in this absorbing baseball story told from the other side of the plate.