Middle Grade Monday – Changes

So, one of the things I’ve discovered since I’ve started Middle Grade Monday is that Middle Grade (MG) means a lot of different things to people – especially publishers. On the whole, I think we can all agree that MG stories tend to revolve around the themes of self discovery and establishing your own identity. But, these stories can be appropriate for a myriad of age groups, generally ranging from 2nd through 7th grades. Many publishers have been sending me items that really fall outside of the interest range of my students and I don’t have the time to read all of them (I wish I did!) That led to some introspection about the purpose of this weekly post.

I work in a middle school serving students aged 11 to 14, which is somewhat covered by the MG spectrum, but a lot of MG works are much too young to meet the reading interests of my students. And a good number of Young Adult titles fall within their interests. Most of the YA titles that meet middle school reading interests might be called ‘early YA’ and are generally reviewed as being of interest to students in 7th grade and up. The easiest (or maybe most universal) way I have of explaining this is with the Hunger Games trilogy. My students gobbled up the first 2 books. I have very few students, however, who’ve made it through book 3. Most of them (even the 14 year olds) just aren’t there yet.

So that’s where the title of this post comes in. After discussing it with Karen, I’ve decided to change the focus of this weekly post from strictly Middle Grade to Middle School (how convenient that it also starts with an ‘m.’) From now on I will be posting on issues that come up in middle school as well as reviewing titles that are of interest to middle school students (both upper MG titles and early YA titles.) I hope this doesn’t disappoint anyone.

For right now, however, I am completely immersed in a YA that is definitely suited to 10th grade and up, so I won’t be mentioning it here. You can look for that review soon elsewhere on the blog. (Hint: Libba Bray is a genius.)

Filed under: Middle Grade Monday, Uncategorized