Lockdowns & Lockouts: Favorite Book Series Give Middle Grade Readers Shelter, a guest post by author Terri Farley

Covid. School shootings. Political chasms between friends. Our kids’ worlds pulse like emotional blenders, but favorite book series can give them a safe place to land.

I didn’t always know this. As a middle school teacher, I urged students not to keep reading the same authors. “Branch out,” I urged them. “Explore!” 

I missed the point, until I became an author. Then, I was schooled by readers.

“I feel like I’m riding with Sam,” they’d begin. Wish fulfillment!  I understood that. After all, the PHANTOM STALLION sprang from my cowgirl dreams. But readers didn’t stop there. Hundreds of emails later, I knew readers experienced wish fulfillment and independence and empowerment through characters in their favorite series.

In James Ponti’s CITY SPIES, wish fulfillment is under-age spycraft. Exotic locales and danger hover over a safety net of found family. In Kelly Yang’s FRONT DESK, Mia’s adventure is role-playing turned real. She’s the public face of her family’s motel, fielding adult questions and hiding adult secrets. 

Independence comes to characters when others respect their skills. Hackers, magicians, mistresses of words —all can gain approval. In CITY SPIES, a man called Mother selects and tests young spies, then frees them to right wrongs. Hank, a motel resident, admires Mia’s FRONT DESK skills and empathy so much that he trusts her to save him from jail.

It’s heartening that many middle grade authors empower characters by having them recognize injustice and do something about it with the skills others have already acknowledged.

In the best series, characters have backbones, not wishbones. They fulfill readers’ expectations, spring surprises and evolve. Readers absorb, escape and learn the quiet joy of reading a great book with the smug knowledge there’s another yet to come.   

Meet the Author

Terri Farley is the best-selling author of books about the contemporary and historic West.

Her Phantom Stallion series for young readers and Seven Tears into the Sea have sold over two million copies worldwide.

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