lirazel | (no subject)

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I have an interview in an hour! I am nervous! So I'm distracting myself here on DW!

I just read Monica Furlong's Wise Child for the first time and absolutely loved it. I'll definitely be reading Juniper as soon as I can get my hands on it and will perhaps write a post about them after that. (I seem to remember someone telling me that Colman wasn't very good? I may skip that one.)

Anyway, it stirred my ever-renewing love for really wonderful middle grade fiction. I'm planning on rereading The Gone-Away Lake books soon and also Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea.

But do y'all have some more MG books to rec me? Especially stuff that was written after the mid-90s (which was when I stopped reading MG books for the most part) but also some classics that are more obscure that you think I may not have read. A lot of my favorites are saved either here or here if you want to see what I've read/what I'm into. I am a big Frances Hardinge fan, too, if that gives you an idea of my taste, but she's really the only currently-writing MG author that I have discovered.

I am looking for either fantasy/scifi or historical fiction books--I just don't read contemporary-set fiction for any age group.

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I hope your interview goes well!

I adore middle grade fiction. Frances Hardinge is indeed one of the best writing in that genre today, but there's lots of other good stuff out there as well. Some other recent stuff I've enjoyed:

- The Barren Grounds, by David A Robertson (indigenous portal fantasy, idk if this'll count as too modern for you as it is partly in the contemporary world as well as in the portal world, but I really liked it)
- The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World, by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale (superhero origin story, not quite as good as the squirrel girl comics by Ryan North but still worth reading)
- The True Meaning of Smekday, by Adam Rex (alien invasion, really excellent)
- Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon (fantasy reminiscent of Eva Ibbotson, extremely charming)
- The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell (crossover between The Twelve Dancing Princesses and the story of Persephone and Hades, and I loved this book SO MUCH. SO MUCH.)
- The Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale (secondary world fantasy, really good as a stand-alone but I didn't think the sequels were as good)

Thanks! I think it went pretty well!

Oooh, these sound intriguing and I have not read a single one of them (though I have heard of Princess Academy before). Thank you!!

Yay, I hope you enjoy them!

Totally second Ursula Vernon's charming MG books!

I've tried to read a couple of her T. Kingfisher books (that is the same writer, right?) and didn't vibe with them, but I think they were D&D fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off and I have no interest in that. Perhaps this will be more to my tastes.

I definitely think her two writing personae are remarkably different. You might still like her A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking (under T. Kingfisher), though!

I have a rec!! Katherine Arden, who wrote that Russian fairy tale fantasy series that started with The Bear and the Nightingale (which I did not like), is also partway through a middle grade horror series that I LOVE. The first two books are Small Spaces and Dead Voices, and they're about an eleven-year-old girl named Ollie and two acquaintances from school (who become friends). The books have a whole lot of heart and I love the generosity with which the narrative treats all the characters. And they're fairly scary, too! Much more in a spooky vibe than like, IDK, a cheesy Goosebumps vibe.

I did really enjoy her Winternight books. I never even thought about reading this series, but now that I have a rec for I'll give it a shot. Thank you!

Best of luck!!

Thank you! I'm pretty happy with how it went!

Seconding Princess Academy!

Some others:

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley 🥺
A Drowned Maiden’s Hair and Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz
Also, the Anastasia Krupnik books by Lois Lowry are hilarious and amazing to return to as an adult!

Dude, I haven't even thought of the Anastasia Krupnik books in like 25 years! I'd forgotten all about them!

*adds books to to-read list*

They are SO funny. I wasn’t familiar with them as a kid and just randomly picked one up when I was in grad school, and it was truly one of the greatest reading decisions of my life. They really satisfy that constant nostalgia I have for being immersed in pre-internet modern day life.

I hope your interview went well!! <3

Thank you! I think it did!

I hope the interview went well or at least that you learned something new! ❤

I think it went well! Now begins the looooong wait...higher ed is so slow about these things so I bet I won't hear anything till March about whether I get a second interview.

Ah. The joys of higher education...

If you haven't already read it, The Mysterious Benedict Society would qualify as scifi/fantasy since one of the young protagonists has paranormal abilities.

Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher was written in 1916 so while it might have been "contemporary set fiction" back in the day, it surely reads like historical fiction now!

I remember loving the Beany Malone books when I was a kid. Again, they were written so long ago that they must qualify as historical fiction now.

I love Rumer Godden's books about dolls: The Doll's House, Holly and Ivy are two standouts. The Dragon of Og. The Diddakoi. (I love her adult books, too.)

Lady Daisy by Dick King Smith is a charming book about a boy who finds a talking doll. (I wrote fanfic for it for an exchange.)

I loved Edward Eager's Books of Magic series: Knight's Castle, Magic by the Lake, etc.

Everything by Eleanor Estes. My favorite is The Hundred Dresses.

Everything by Elizabeth Enright, which it appears you've already read?

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.

Maida's Little Shop was another favorite.

Good luck with the interview!

I was raised on the Five Little Peppers, actually! And yes to Elizabeth Enright and Eleanor Estes!

But the rest I haven't read (and didn't even know that Rumer Godden wrote books about dolls!) so I'm excited to check them out!

Thanks so much!

I think she wrote a couple of dozen books for children, including seven or eight about dolls, I believe. Most of her books are back in print, or at least they were a few years ago. Anyway, they're not nearly as hard to find as when I started collecting her back in the late eighties, early nineties.

Some of these books, The Melendy Family series, for example, I reread to write a Yuletide pinch hit, or a gift fic for one of the other book fandom exchanges. Some I haven't looked at in over 50 years.

They're comfort rereads for me now.

WISE CHILD, oh my, I am thrilled. I adored that book as a child; it and Juniper were touchstones of my reading life. I still remember the description of Wise Child's sunny bed nook almost word-for-word.

I think you might really enjoy Cynthia Kadohata's historical fiction MG books, specifically The Thing About Luck, A Place to Belong (warning for "children's lit about the nuclear age is alive and well still, apparently"), and Weedflower. Truly excellent writing, feels like a genuine child's perspective, has some real home truths.

I am so sad I didn't discover it as a child! Gosh, I can only imagine how it would have touched me then. (And yes, I am a grown adult jealous of her bed nook!)

Thank you! I was not familiar with her name at all, so I will seek her out. (Assuming she is a she.)

Is the cover still that incredible Dillon illustration? The aesthetic world of those books has remained with me to a remarkable degree.

I got mine from the library and yes it was that cover! So gorgeous!

I hope the interview went well!

The only rec I have is for you to re-read The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Always a good choice ;)

Thanks, it did!

And yup: always a good choice!

I hope the interview went fantastically!

All of Laurence Yep's middle-grade fantasy novels are great -- I grew up on the Dragon of the Lost Sea series (so perhaps you did too!) but I also love his historical fiction. Other classics you may enjoy if you have not read them or want the nostalgia reread: Edward Eager's fantasy novels (my favorites are Seven-Day Magic and Knight's Castle) and Joan Aiken's extremely weird Dido Twite books.

For a more recent rec, Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs, a Snow Queen riff about fairy tales and loneliness and saving your friend even if you don't know if you can save your friendship, is one of my favorite books of the last decade (I also liked her Cronus Chronicles trilogy which is a much more lighthearted story about cousins dealing with Greek Gods in the Mall of America.) Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, a time-travel-inflected puzzle-box of a book in deep conversation with A Wrinkle in Time, is also extremely good! And I read and enjoyed Iris and the Tiger this year, in which a girl visits a weird house which is haunted by literalized surrealism.

Thanks! I think it went fine!

Oooh, thank you! These sound great!

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