Middle school | Page 2 of 8

Discover Why Kids Love The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza #1,

Young readers and reluctant readers have more in common than they think. Reluctant readers in most cases just think that they don’t want to read. Assuming that we’re talking about young, elementary school ages, both groups have to find the vehicle that can get them to realize that reading is not punishment. It’s got to be a book so relentlessly fun, over the top silly that it commands young people to engage in something by themselves, for their own enjoyment. The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza is the first book in the series that takes its rightful place alongside Dog Man and Investigators as the go-to graphic novel series for ages seven and up. This book also came out a couple of years ago, so if you’re judging as to why it’s just being reviewed now, I say be curious, not judgmental.

The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza is the start of a beautiful graphic novel friendship for ages seven and up.

Like a cat video and a potato chip, but in a book

Discover a Zen Monk’s Guide to Peaceful Living

So, you’re telling me it’s not a problem if I wander without direction or purpose through life? No, that is not what the book, nor I, are saying that’s what you should do or how you should act. It’s Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life: A Zen Monk’s Guide to Living Stress-Free One Day at a Time sounds like it could be an alternate title to a Korean drama or a positive affirmation statement you’d see in a middle school. However, in the latter situation, those students might’ve taken it as a carte blanche to do even less than their doing now. This is not a Spicoli get-out-of-jail-free card, it’s simply a book that encourages you to take a step back and think.

It’s Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life is immediately disarming and puts living stress-free in the driver’s seat with vignettes on living a more chill version of you.

Stop, collaborate and zen

Westfallen is mglit that perfectly baits the hook and rewards readers

Westfallen is the mglit book that you didn’t know that you needed. In this case the ‘you’ that we’re referencing are upper-elementary, middle school or just those good-time readers who want to engage in a solidly paced, semi-plausible action novel that feels like something that makes you think ‘they don’t make em like that anymore’. Westfallen also flies in the face of recent mglit books that brazenly start their book series by putting a number on its spine. I’m all for optimistic thinking, but stating the goal that more books in the series will follow this one, before establishing their awesomeness is a practice that’s fallen far short lately.

Westfallen is the adventure of two trios of kids, separated by 80 years who are communicating via a radio they found in the waning days of WWII.

Start with the end in mind when creating a series

Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is for the curious

Children’s books can be for the curious, or the mandated. Unfortunately, elementary and middle school ages often engage in books because of the former. However, it’s those curious kids, the ones who have a basic interest in a subject and want to learn more about it, that are laying the seeds for future success at a higher level. That’s a challenging lesson to impart to younger readers for sure. Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is a chapter book aimed at middle school readers who are smart enough to realize that fire does not always equal total devastation and that life finds a way.

Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is middle-school, non-fiction whose engaging text keeps the facts coming for the curious.

Now dig this baby

Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition, a searing, timeless graphic novel

There’s something special about a book being out of print for a while. The classic animated Disney films used to go “in the vault” and then had a big hoop-de-do when they could be viewed again. Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition was out of print for over a decade. The only way to get your hands on it was to find the original two-issue comic book miniseries from 1997 or the graphic novel that followed its release. The 2024 presidential election is nigh and Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition is as pointed and aware as it was when it was originally released. It’s a beautiful, paranoid fever dream of a graphic novel that sears its way through the political spectrum leaving both sides wondering what went wrong with modern America.

Uncle Sam: Special Election Edition is a reissued, timeless, relevant graphic novel that’s just as powerful, now as it was in 1997.

Wow. A graphic novel that commands your attention.

Exoplanets, STEM that reaches wide from elementary to high

Exoplanets: A Guide to the Worlds Outside our Solar System is illustrated wonderment at the planets that reside in another neighborhood.

Somehow or another, Exoplanets: A Guide to the Worlds Outside our Solar System snuck past my review radar. Oh it landed in our office, but it gravitated towards our reference books and not in the ‘new’ books to review area. Exoplanets prematurely made its way into our ‘forever’ book stack, instead of the working book column that gets cycled through and written up. It certainly would’ve helped had we read Exoplanets when it was initially released because at that time we were planning our 2023 Dragon Con interviews. At that event we chatted with a handful of scientists researching conditions on various planets and the propulsion methods that astronauts would use to get there. Even though Exoplanets is an illustrated book, a medium that’s stereotypically thought of as a children’s book; it’s testament to the equally correct belief that just because the book is intended for children, it can reach far beyond its target audience.

Space, the frontier is calling you.

The Vanquishers: Secret of the Reaping, redeeming vampire mglit sequel

It’s great when the second book is a series is better than the first. Don’t live life in the rear-view mirror, keep pressing on with the pedal to the metal and tell your story. The Vanquishers established its roots as mglit vampire with a family and historical twist. The new generation of vampire slayers and their training had been dormant because the vampires had either called a truce or gone the way of the dodo. In Secret of the Reaping, the dual-fanged creatures are back, getting bolder and the history of the group might have something to do with it. Much to the enjoyment of upper-elementary through middle school students, the sequel zips along at a quicker pace with more action than its predecessor.

The Vanquishers: Secret of the Reaping is an mglit sequel that’s better than the first, with more humor and faster action, but long chapters.

Olivetti, mglit that makes you believe that a typewriter can communicate

If these walls could talk. The aspect of inanimate objects communicating or having personalities is a fun way to think isn’t it? The walls of a school would have a different story than that of a hospital and a home would be something much more personal. Olivetti is the story of a typewriter and how it came to communicate with the family where it’s lived for years. Kids, a typewriter is a manual device that would create documents when the keys are pressed down. The hammer would physically move the specific letter that you pressed before raising a thin film of ink that would allow the indention of said key to create the letter on the paper upon impact. It’s also a go-to for some creative types who like the tactile process of creating manuscripts and find the clacking sound of keys rapidly and correctly hitting their intended destination soothing, cathartic, and an enhancement to the process. As a novel, Olivetti is a charming throwback of an mglit book that asks you to suspend belief, and then effortlessly brings you along if you chose to believe that a typewriter has a personality all its own.

Olivetti is mglit that delivers heart and a strong story in a very sneaky way that will charm reluctant readers and make fans of the genre happy too.

See: Charming and surprising