Top Ten Tuesdays/ Middle Grade Debuts I Want To Read

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by thatartsyreadergirl, which has a new weekly topic.

July 25: Debut Novels I Enjoyed (A debut novel is an author’s first published book. You could also choose to share genre or age group debuts if you’d prefer, such as an adult fiction author’s first YA book or a mystery writer’s first romance.) (submitted by Angela @ Reading Frenzy). I might be wrong, but when an author switches genre from the one they typically write in, it is a debut for them. Anyway, I haven’t talked about Middle Grade in a while, so I am picking it as my genre today.

Goodreads Blurb:

A young scientist finds a magical way to escape death, but can’t escape her emotions.

Twelve-year-old Juniper Edwards can’t stop chasing the endangered butterfly her sister died trying to catch. In her grief, Juniper finds comfort in her family’s study of insects, because science is based on logic, order, and control. But then Juniper’s search for the butterfly nearly kills her, too, and when she wakes up with newfound abilities, she discovers that the line between science and magic–and life and death–is not as solid as she thought. With the help of her mysterious neighbors, Juniper tries an experiment to change things back to the way they were. Its result will force her to face the fact that some things are way beyond her control.

Goodreads Blurb:

Thirteen-year-old Julia would much rather work with horses at the rescue barn than worry about things like dating and makeup. But when her BFF meets a boy at camp, Julia’s determined not to get left behind. After a makeover from her older sister, she posts a picture of herself online and gets a comment from Tyler―a seemingly nice kid who lives across town. As they DM more and more, Julia’s sure that Tyler understands her in a way her family never has. Even better, their relationship earns her tons of attention at school.

Then Julia finds out Tyler’s true plan, and her world is turned upside down. She fiercely guards her secret, but could her silence allow her friends to fall into the same trap?

Goodreads Blurb:

Thirteen-year-old Rain must overcome sadness after her all-star brother is badly beaten up at a white frat party. Eventually, Rain finds hope again and helps her family heal.

I feel like Rain.

Rain rising through the unexpected.

Gentle and a force like Mom says.

I feel like me.

Rain is keeping a big secret from everyone around her: She’s sad. All the time.

Xander, her older brother, is an all-star student athlete and a superhero to Rain since their dad is not around. But even he can’t help Rain with her dark thoughts. Rain hates the way she looks, and she feels inferior to her best friend, Nara, who’s skinny and got more money, lighter skin, and hair that curls.

When Xander is the victim of a hate crime, things take a turn for the worse. Xander stops speaking to everyone, including Rain, whose dark thoughts turn into action.

Rain’s secret battle puts her life on the line. But when her favorite teacher invites her to an after-school circle group, Rain finds friends and the courage to help herself and her family heal. Like the rain, she is both gentle and a force, and though she faces many storms in her life, she finds the strength to rise again.

Goodreads Blurb:

Twelve-year-old Raj is happiest flying kites with his best friend, Iqbal. As their kites soar, Raj feels free, like his beloved India soon will be, and he can’t wait to celebrate their independence.

But when a British lawyer draws a line across a map, splitting India in two, Raj is thrust into a fractured world. With Partition declared, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim families are torn apart—and Raj’s Hindu and Iqbal’s Muslim families are among them.

Forced to flee and become refugees, Raj’s family is left to start over in a new country. After suffering devastating losses, Raj must summon the courage to survive the brutal upheaval of both his country and his heart.

Goodreads Blurb:

Life isn’t easy on twelve-year-old Mars. As if seventh grade isn’t hard enough, Mars is also grappling with the recent death of their father and a realization they never got to share with him: they’re nonbinary. But with their skates laced up and the ice under their feet, all of those struggles melt away. When Mars’ triple toe loop draws the attention of a high school hot shot, he dares them to skate as a boy so the two can compete head-to-head. Unable to back down from a challenge, Mars accepts. But as competition draws near, the struggles of life off the rink start to complicate their performance in the rink, and Mars begins to second guess if there’s a place for them on the ice at all.

Skating on Mars is a tender examination of grief and a hopeful middle grade tale of self-discovery.

Goodreads Blurb:

Caught between two worlds—a poverty-stricken village and a fancy big-city school—a young Sri Lankan girl must decide who she really is and where she really belongs.

1998, Colombo. The Sri Lankan Civil War is raging, but everyday life must go on. At Kavi’s school, her friends talk about the weekly Top 40, the Backstreet Boys, Shahrukh Khan, Leo & Kate… and who died—or didn’t—in the latest bombing. But Kavi is afraid of something even scarier than war. She fears that if her friends discover her secret—that she is not who she is pretending to be—they’ll stop talking to her.

I want to be friends with these / happy, / fearless, / girls / who look like they / belong.
So I could also be / happy, / fearless, / and maybe even / belong.

Kavi’s scholarship to her elite new school was supposed to be everything she ever wanted, but as she tries to find some semblance of normalcy in a country on fire, nothing is going according to plan. In an effort to fit in with her wealthy, glittering, and self-assured new classmates, Kavi begins telling lies, trading her old life—where she’s a poor girl whose mother has chosen a new husband over her daughter—for a new one, where she’s rich, loved, and wanted. But how long can you pretend to be someone else?

Goodreads Blurb:

Eleven-year-old Maybelle Lane collects sounds. She records the Louisiana crickets chirping, Momma strumming her guitar, their broken trailer door squeaking. But the crown jewel of her collection is a sound she didn’t collect herself: an old recording of her daddy’s warm-sunshine laugh, saved on an old phone’s voicemail. It’s the only thing she has of his, and the only thing she knows about him.

Until the day she hears that laugh–his laugh–pouring out of the car radio. Going against Momma’s wishes, Maybelle starts listening to her radio DJ daddy’s new show, drinking in every word like a plant leaning toward the sun. When he announces he’ll be the judge of a singing contest in Nashville, she signs up. What better way to meet than to stand before him and sing with all her heart?

But the road to Nashville is bumpy. Her starch-stiff neighbor Mrs. Boggs offers to drive her in her RV. And a bully of a boy from the trailer park hitches a ride too. These are not the people May would have chosen to help her, but it turns out they’re searching for things too. And the journey will bond them into the best kind of family–the kind you choose for yourself.

Goodreads Blurb:

Paleontology-loving Haven West and her older sister, Margie, have hardly talked with their mom since she retreated into a deep depression. Each morning Haven wonders if it’s going to be a “good” or “bad” day, and the only thing that seems to occupy her mom is collecting fossils for her bone garden.

But one night, after an ominous moonlight heart-to-heart, her mom disappears—right before Haven discovers she’s inherited a monstrous family trait. It turns out that she is the latest in a long line of cryptids, a past her mom has been hiding. Suddenly, the Texas terrain is full of ghostly dinosaur silhouettes and Haven is breaking out in scales at all the wrong moments. Even worse, she doesn’t know whom she can trust with this information. 

Since the only person who could guide her through this has vanished, Haven sets off on the road trip of a lifetime with Margie and their new friend Rye in tow. Together, they’re determined to find her mom and finally get some answers, hopefully before Haven’s secret is revealed . . .

Goodreads Blurb:

Seventh grader Wendy Toledo knows that black holes and immigration police have one thing in they can both make things disappear without a trace. When her family moves to a new all-American neighborhood, Wendy knows the keep her head down, build a telescope that will win the science fair, and stay on her family’s safe orbit.

But that’s easier said than done when there’s a woman hiding out from ICE agents in the church across the alley—and making Wendy’s parents very nervous.

As bullying at school threatens Wendy’s friendships and her hopes for the science fair, and her family’s secrets start to unravel, Wendy finds herself caught in the middle of far too many gravitational pulls. When someone she loves is detained by ICE, Wendy must find the courage to set her own orbit—and maybe shift the paths of everyone around her.

Goodreads Blurb:

It’s 1935, and tuberculosis is ravaging the nation. Everyone is afraid of this deadly respiratory illness. But what happens when you actually have it?

When Halle and her mother both come down with TB, they are shunned—and then they are sent to the J.N. Adam Tuberculosis far from home, far from family, far from the world.

Tucked away in the woods of upstate New York, the hospital is a closed and quiet place. But it is not, Halle learns, a prison. Free of her worried and difficult father for the first time in her life, she slowly discovers joy, family, and the healing power of honey on the children’s ward, where the girls on the floor become her confidantes and sisters. But when Mama suffers a lung hemorrhage, their entire future—and recovery—is thrown into question….

Alex