Announcing the 2024 Project: Mind the Middle, exploring middle grade and early teen literature

It’s been a couple of years since we had a project to focus on here at TLT. But the past year has been rough for middle grade fiction and books for young teens. Barnes and Noble emptied their shelves of all but the bestsellers. Goodreads cut them out of their yearly awards. At the same time, the news about tweens and young teens and reading is bleak. Test scores are falling and youth are reporting that they read less for fun. You know what this needs? A MIND THE MIDDLE PROJECT.

We’re going to spend 2024 dedicated to highlighting middle grade and young teen lit. And we need your help!

What this looks like is an ongoing process, but if you are a regular reader and have seen past projects, you know that in addition to doing all of our regular coverage, we will commit to highlighting and emphasizing this area that we feel needs an extra bit of love and attention.

So how, exactly, can you help?

In short, sign up for guest posts!

Authors, get creative in how you can help us talk about understand, and promote middle grade and younger YA lit. Interview each other. Share your cover reveals here. Tell us why you write what you write. Help us help kids, parents, teachers and librarians find the books that they are looking for.

Teachers and Librarians, help us create thematic book lists. Share your programs, book clubs and more. This will be a great place to share your thoughts about what your concerns are, the feedback you get from kids, what’s working, and what’s not.

Let’s talk about young teens and how to get them reading.

Click here for our guest post guidelines to see what you are agreeing to. Please note that these guidelines ask about pictures and it is vitally important that you understand that all pictures you submit should be your own creations that you have copyright to.

Click here to fill out our form and sign up for a guest post. The form will be open throughout 2024. We don’t mind repeat performances.

We hope next year you will find this blog to be a place of thoughtful discussion – and a place to find information on book categories which are getting harder to find and promote to their target audience.

For more information on why we chose this theme for our 2024 project, see

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