What Is Middle Grade?

Every middle grade author seems to get this question:

"Should my kid read your book?"

Of course the correct response to this is "Yes, yes, absolutely! Buy it at once. In fact, just to be on the safe side, buy a copy for every room in the house."

But really, we just don't know. We're not sure what you're asking.

Recently someone phrased the question in a way that made the issue clearer to me. "Would my kid like your books? You said you write middle grade. She's in 3rd grade. Is that middle grade? She reads at a 9th grade level, though."

Now I understand the question.

The "middle grade" label hasn't been around that long, and it's not clear to most people what it means. It's not clear to me, come to that. The books tend to have grade levels or age levels stamped on the jacket flap, leaving both children and adults with the impression that "middle grade" is a measure of reading difficulty.

I think that it is not.

Most middle grade novels are not easier to read than most adult novels. In fact, they may be harder. However, they are not too hard for most upper elementary children. Neither are most adult novels too hard for them, come to that. The Hobbit has a higher lexile level (whatever that is) than Cry, the Beloved Country.

Vaguely, the age levels on the book jacket might suggest interest level. But the suggestion is not exclusive. I hear from a lot of adults who read my books.

So I thought maybe what the parent was really asking was just what "middle grade" means. And here's the definition of middle grade fiction I came up with.

In a middle grade novel:

• There may be some swearing, but it's usually limited and/or not spelled out on the page.
• Romance may happen, but it's not the focus. There will be no sex scenes.
• Bad things may happen, but despair is never permanent. Ultimately it turns out that life is worth living.

That's not a full and exact definition, of course. Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny is middle grade under that definition. (A book I loved at age ten, by the way.) But it's the best I can come up with right now.

Every time I try to add something to it, I either think of exceptions or realize that I'm trying to impose my own preferences.

After writing this definition, I started googling to see what other people think "middle grade" means. And I'm afraid I disagree with a lot of them. Here's what I think middle grade is not:

• It's not a reading level.
• It's not written with simplified sentence structure, easier vocabulary, or lower expectations for plot and character development.
• The plot is not external-rather-than-internal. It can be either; it can be both.
• It does not necessarily feature a protagonist who is between 8 and 13 years of age.

Anyway. My definition may be so much blather. But it's what I've got for the moment.

Were the Oz Books Girls' Books?

Before there was Harry Potter, there was Oz. There was a lot of Oz. There were 14 Oz books by L. Frank Baum published between 1900 and 1920, and there were dozens more written by other authors after his death.

Baum received thousands of fan letters. People lined up to buy the books. There was merchandising. There was probably fanfic too, but, you know, not online. 

Oz was big.

Oz wasn't the "just a dream" world of the movie. It was a real magical world that was visited by real children-- a girl named Betsy, and a girl named Trot, and a girl named Dorothy, and... maybe some other girls. I don't remember.

My grandfather read all the Baum Oz books as a child, while women battled for the right to vote and men battled for German trenches. There was nothing remotely similar being published at the time. Children's fiction was dominated by the Depressingly Moral (let's just say Little Eva has a lot to answer for) and the shoot 'em up action adventure. No one could die in Oz. This was a flaw as far as narrative tension, but a real innovation otherwise.

Given a choice between reading about brave little heroines wasting away from consumption and reading about the caverns of the Nome King, kids chose the latter. Early twen-cen kids loved the Oz books.

Many decades later, my brother and I read them. First we read all the L. Frank Baum ones, and then all the Ruth Plumley Thompson ones and the John R. Neill ones. Even as late as the 1970s, they were a large part of the extant body of children's fantasy literature.

Although the main character, Dorothy, was a girl, and the other main child characters (Betsy and Trot and Princess Ozma) were girls, and the only boy we saw much of in the Baum books (Button Bright) was kind of a low-watt bulb, nobody ever suggested to us that these were girls' books.

One of the Baum books does have a boy protagonist, Tip,  who ***spoiler alert*** near the end of the book becomes a girl. Permanently. If this traumatized my grandfather or my brother for life, they never mentioned it.

 

(Chances a middle grade author could get away with that nowadays: Zero.)

(Possibly slightly less than that.)

I've talked to my brother about this a bit over the years, as he's raised children and I've raised books. According to him, he never, as a child, experienced any failure to connect to a female protagonist because of her un-maleness. According to him, the only books he felt were off-limits to him were those that were clearly identified as being "for girls"...

...and that is what we're doing far too much of today.

I'm picturing how the Oz books might be published today... in a world where they weren't already classics, that is. Pink and lavender covers. Glitter, perhaps. Lots of emphasis on the Princess aspect.

After all, no one would expect boys to read a book about girls.

100 Books You Should Read...

... if you're exactly like me.

After grumbling about amazon's list of 100 books everyone should read, I sat down to compose my own list.

I followed amazon's apparent rule of just one book (or series) per writer. Otherwise this would be largely a list of books by Diana Wynne Jones, Terry Pratchett and Dr. Seuss.

I set another rule for myself: There are no books on the list by authors I know personally.

Anyway, the following list contains hardly anything from the adult or juvenile literary canon. There are no books that I was required to read in public school, and only one that I read for a college course. The list is made up of books that I personally found to be at least three of the following:

• fascinating
• fun
• funny
• life-affirming
• well-written
• full of information that I didn't know
• memorable
• worth multiple rereads

They're books I've recommended to people. So, without further ado, here's a list of books you're guaranteed to enjoy... if you're exactly like me. :-)

1. A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs: Reminscences of My Life in Camp With the 33^rd Colored Troops, Late 1^st South Carolina Volunteers by Susie King Taylor
2. A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti [poems]
3. A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss
4. A House for the Season series by Marion Chesney [Regency romance]
5. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
7. A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska by Hannah Breece
8. A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman
9. America at 1750, a Social Portrait by Richard Hofstadter
10. America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines by Gail Collins
11. An A to Z of Georgian London by John Rocque & Ralph Hyde [atlas]
12. And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts
13. Andrew Lang's Fairy Books by Leonore Blanche Alleyne Lang¹
14. Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber
15. As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of 18^th Century Americans by Stephanie Grauman Wolf
16. Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton
17. Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
18. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
19. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
20. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willem
21. Down the Common: A Year in the Life of a Medieval Woman by Ann Baer
22. Dr. Goat by Georgiana
23. Earl's Too Cool For Me by Leah Komaiko
24. Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key²
25. Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce
26. "Fire, Fire!" Said Mrs. McGuire by Bill Martin
27. The Golden Gazette: News from the [California] Newspapers of 1848-1857 by Dudley T. Ross
28. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
29. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
30. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
31. Having Our Say by the Delaney Sisters
32. I Can't Said The Ant by Polly Cameron
33. I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Dr. Seuss
34. I Hate English by Ellen Levine
35. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
36. If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow by Cooper Edens
37. In Search of the Birth of Jesus by Paul William Roberts
38. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself by Harriet Ann Jacobs
39. Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino
40. Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Erickson
41. Journey by Aaron Becker
42. Just Us Women by Jeanette Caines
43. Katherine by Anya Seton
44. Life in a Medieval Castle by Frances and Joseph Gies
45. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
46. Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind by Carol Hollinger
47. May I Bring a Friend? by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers
48. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
49. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
50. Mother Earth Father Sky by Sue Harrison
51. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
52. One Monday Morning by Uri Shulevitz
53. Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side by Rose Cohen
54. Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt
55. People by Peter Spier
56. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
57. Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia by Teresa Crisp Williams et al
58. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
59. Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer
60. Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary
61. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
62. Roots by Alex Haley
63. Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
64. Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy E. Shaw
65. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
66. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City by Shane White
67. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
68. Speak Softly, and Carry a Beagle by Charles Schultz
69. Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years of Pogo by Walt Kelly
70. The Adventures of Tintin: The Black Island by Hergé
71. The Aran Islands by J.M. Synge
72. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
73. The Five Gospels, by Robert W. Funk et al
74. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar
75. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
76. The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
77. The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis
78. The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones
79. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith
80. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by herself
81. The Norton Anthology of Poetry
82. The Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak
83. The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage by Carol Lynn Yellin & Janann Sherman
84. The Prospering by Elizabeth George Speare
85. The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W.E.B. Du Bois
86. The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck: A Journey Through the Himalayas and Down the Brahmaputra by Rory Nugent
87. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
88. The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber
89. The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
90. The Winged Watchman by Hilda Van Stockum
91. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
92. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
93. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
94. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
95. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
96. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
97. Watership Down by Richard Adams
98. When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
99. Women in England c. 1275-1525: Documentary Sources by P.J.P. Goldberg 
    100. Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel

1As my mother always says, "This women's lib thing wasn't about nothing, you know."

2Key wrote several other middle grade fantasies, all worth reading

100 Must-Read Books by... some people.

Sigh. Amazon has just released a list of 100 books everyone should read. Of course I started out counting how many I'd read. But I quickly became distracted, as I scrolled through the rows of book covers, by how few of the books were by female authors.

So I ended up counting the male authors on the list. Seventy of the books are by men.

I want to acknowledge that progress has been made. Traditionally, lists of this kind contain only a handful of books by women. Or none.

There are also five (5) books on the list by black writers.

Now, here are a few books by women and/or black writers that are not on the list although most bookish people have probably read most of them:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (probably not qualified because she's already on the list once)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Roots by Alex Haley

Just off the top of my head.

There are 22 children's books on the list (thanks, Sarah!) of which 15 are by men. I won't bother to list those books by women that could have been included, because it's my impression most children's books are by women. But here are a few by African-American writers that surely qualify for a literary to-do list:

The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Oh, and a whole host of picture books by Donald Crews or Pat Cummings.

Anyway. These (not so) minor quibbles aside, let me get back to my original count. I find I've read 36 of the 100 books on the list. Of those, I liked 16 and loved 3. There are also 6 books on the list that I tried to read but gave up on. But that's not the authors' fault. It's this darn ADD.

Bookstores with signed books in stock

Hi! As of today, 2/3/14, the following upstate New York bookstores have signed copies of Jinx and Jinx's Magic in stock. If you're interested in buying one, you might want to call the store before you go to make sure they've still got them.

The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza
1475 Western Avenue
Albany, New York 12203
518-489-4761

Barnes & Noble
131 Colonie Center
(on Wolf Rd near Central Ave)
Albany, New York 12205
518-438-1728

Barnes & Noble
Consumer Square Plaza
821 County Road 64
Elmira, New York 14903
607-796-2020

Harry Potter in the Style of Famous Writers #2

(some parts previously posted elsewhere)

Today it's A.A. Milne and J.R.R. Tolkien, neither of whom I find I can carry for long. So, briefly:

Harry the Pooh

“Ron,” said Harry Potter (rum-te-tum-tum), “You don’t think I’m… well…”

“Yes, Harry Potter?” said Ron helpfully.

“Well, I do mean to say,” (rum-te-tum-tum) said Harry Potter thoughtfully. “That is, I say, Ron, you don’t think I’m, well, sort of Possessed by Voldemort, do you?”

“Bother!” said Ron. “I do wish you wouldn’t say that name, Harry Potter.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harry Potter. “It sort of came out, you know, in a sort of a way.”

Harry of the Rings

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Harry, sir," said Ron. "But I never did hold with no riding of invisible reptilian horses. 'Tain't natural-like, if you see what I mean."

"No, Ron," said Harry wearily, "I fear you never did. But it is fated to me. The thestrals hang before my eyes, white-eyed and dwimber. Just be glad you can't see them, old friend. I'm afraid Dumbledore was right."

Harry Potter in the Style of Famous Writers #1

(previously posted elsewhere)

Bear with me for a bit of silliness... to wit:

How Harry Potter would have come out if various other writers had written him.

First up, John Steinbeck.

Harry Potter and the Grapes of Wrath

The little wizards watched evil creep up on them like the tide. They studied Defense Against the Dark Arts and learned no counter-curses, they cried Expecto Patronum but could summon no patroni. And the wizards of great knowledge have worked, have studied, have considered, and the Death Eaters are gathering in the graveyards, and the Dementors' psychic rot and general air of extreme Depression is poisoning the air.

These little wizards will be Death Eaters next year, for Voldemort's lure will have choked out the last scrap of decency from their little wands.

Hogwarts will belong to the Death Eaters. Only the Death Eaters can survive, for they have drawn great powers that the little wizards cannot dream of. And these powers may cost your soul, but they put pumpkin bread on the table, pumpkin bread and canned peaches and butterbeer, which costs two sickles. And a wizard must feed his family. A wizard must have sickles and knuts to feed his family. 

The evil spreads over Hogwarts, and its creeping is a great sorrow on the land. Wizards who can accio anything and make great maps, maps that trace everybody's location, can find no way to locate Voldemort. Big wizards can find no way to stop the little wizards from becoming Death Eaters. Wizards who have discovered twelve uses for dragon's blood cannot create an educational system which stops turning one-fourth of the little wizards evil. And the failure hangs over Hogwarts like a great sorrow.

And so the Second War begins.