Why We Need More “Developmentally Relevant” Upper MG Romance by Laurie Morrison

We have 2 great posts today about romance in middle grade that highlight some great middle grade books and why we need those books that touch on everything that is wild, wonderful and terrifying about first crushes, first kisses, and those first heartbreaks. Also, sports! Be sure to check out Erin Becker’s post as well.

When I first started writing fiction, I wrote character-driven young adult novels with romance. I was teaching seventh and eighth graders at the time, and I attempted to write the kinds of young young adult novels many of my students craved. I wrote books with protagonists who were in ninth or tenth grade and were relatively innocent and inexperienced–at least in terms of romance and partying. That’s the kind of teen I was, and the kind of protagonist some of my students were looking for.

Many of my students were also reading older young adult novels with 16-, 17- or 18-year-old main characters, but sometimes they wanted books that were closer to their current life stage. There was a need for more novels that were a little bit aspirational, but relatable, too.

They had plenty of options if they wanted to escape into a world that was much more mature, glamorous, and exciting than theirs. But they had fewer options for books that hit closer to home, offering them a chance to escape and imagine while seeing more of their own worries and experiences reflected, too.

My YA novels didn’t sell to publishers. Editors often gave the feedback that they were too quiet, or that the main characters were too naive, or that the voice or premise–or both–felt more middle grade than young adult.

Eventually, I took that advice and started working on middle grade novels. I realized my best chance at publishing stories for middle-school-aged readers was to write for the older end of the middle grade category rather than the younger end of YA, and that’s where I’ve found my niche.

I love writing upper middle grade novels. But when I switched my focus from YA to middle grade, I moved away from centering romance in my stories. All my published books have featured glimmers of crushes and potential romantic relationships at the very least, but I hadn’t written any real romances–until my new book, Keeping Pace.

Keeping Pace is the story of two overachieving former-friends-turned-rivals who train for a half-marathon during the summer after eighth grade and have to rethink what it really means to win–and what they really mean to each other. Before I wrote it, I had internalized the idea that I wasn’t allowed to write an all-out tween romance. But then, in the summer of 2021, I was stuck.

I was creatively burned out and mired in a major middle grade reading slump. I simply could not get into any middle grade novels, even when I could tell the novels were excellent. I was only interested in reading young adult and adult romance.

The common writing advice is “write what you know,” but I think it’s at least as important to write what you love. I was loving romance. The only kind of story I could imagine getting excited about writing was one with a giddy, awkward, swoony romance.

And I realized there were some other middle grade authors writing romance. I had loved Debbi Michiko’s Keep It Together, Keiko Carter and Just Be Cool, Jenna Sakai. I’d been delighted by the witty romantic banter in Shannon Doleski’s Mary Underwater and moved to tears by the vulnerable romance dynamics in Nicole Melleby’s In The Role of Brie Hutchens. So I set out to write an upper MG romance of my own.

When I wrote my novel Up for Air, I had a clear audience in mind. I knew my students would relate to the main character, Annabelle. Many of them had had experiences like hers–playing on an older sports team or with older musicians in an orchestra and grappling with the ways they could keep up and the ways they couldn’t. In that novel, I wrote about a lot of topics I wasn’t sure I was “allowed” to delve into in middle grade. But I kept going because I was so confident it was a story kids wanted.

Keeping Pace was the opposite. By the time I started writing it, I’d been out of the classroom for a few years. I hadn’t taught since before the pandemic, so I’d missed an enormous, traumatic chunk of middle school readers’ lives. And I wrote this story almost completely for myself. I circled back to the aspects of my shelved YA novels that had meant the most to me. I wrote about 14-year-old characters because that was my hardest age socially and that’s the version of my past self I feel most tender toward. I wrote the first first-kiss scene I’d written in years, and it was a blast.

This fall, after Keeping Pace was finished, I went back to teaching middle school. And so many readers–middle schoolers and also fifth graders–have come to my sixth grade library looking for romance. Some of them are ready for YA romances, at least some of the time. And I know a small number of delightful “young” YA novels like the ones I used to want to publish–Tiffany Schmidt’s Bookish Boyfriends series, for instance, and Olivia Abtahi’s Perfectly Parvin and Azar on Fire. But many of these readers are eager for middle grade novels with romance, like Debbi Michiko Florence’s books, and Nashae Jones’s Courtesy of Cupid, and Wendy Wan-Long Shang’s Bubble Trouble. And my Keeping Pace, too, I hope.

A school library media specialist named Steve Tetreault posted on social media recently about how he prefers the term “developmentally relevant” to “age-appropriate,” and I completely agree. 

“Age-appropriate” feels laced with judgment. It doesn’t honor the fact that two kids who are the same age will have completely different life experiences, perspectives, and comfort levels with different kinds of content, and it raises the question of who, exactly, gets to decide what’s “appropriate.” “Developmentally relevant” is what I’ve always strived to give middle school readers, both as an author and as a teacher.

My books are designated as “age 10-14,” but that doesn’t mean they’ll be relevant for every kid within that age range. In recent years, “upper MG” is getting more attention as a subcategory. There are more books about thirteen-year-olds than there used to be. But we still don’t have enough–and we especially don’t have enough books with fourteen and fifteen-year-old characters. The relative scarcity of young teen characters makes it that much more difficult for tweens and young teens to find the developmentally relevant stories they crave.

And it’s especially important to have a bigger variety of books that center romance for tween and young teen readers. Romance is awkward and complicated and amazing and baffling–especially for adolescents! Adolescents are at such wildly different places in terms of what they know and want. Not every middle grade reader wants romance, but now that I’m back in the classroom, I’m seeing again that many of the ones who want romance really want it. And we owe them more opportunities to find the stories that are relevant for them.

I’m glad to be adding to this category for the sake of my current students, my former students, and my former adolescent self. I’m glad middle school readers have more choices than they did when I started teaching and writing. And I still think they need more.

BIO: Laurie Morrison is the co-author of Every Shiny Thing  and the author of Up for Air,  Saint Ivy: Kind at All Costs,  Coming Up Short, and her most recent novel Keeping Pace, which features friends-turned-rivals training for a half-marathon. When Laurie was in her twenties, she fell in love with distance running and ran three marathons and several half-marathons. Laurie has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her middle grade novels have received starred reviews and been chosen as Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections and finalists for state award lists. She lives with her family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she teaches middle school language arts. 

Filed under: Middle Grade, Middle Grade Fiction, Mind the Middle, Mind the Middle Project