Middle Grade Novels in Verse, Book Earrings, and More!

No one does novels-in-verse like Nikki Grimes! In this beautiful book set in middle school, 12-year-old Joylin Johnson finds her world in disarray. Her friends are suddenly flirting with each other, basketball isn’t the same, and a new kid arrives that gives Joy all sorts of feelings. Will Joy survive middle school?

In the third book in The Kids Under the Stairs series, Jordan J *might* have made enemies of the entire school dance team due to his honest reviews of their dances in the school paper. But with his goal of making it onto his favorite dance show, he needs help and appeals to the only dance team member who is still talking to him. Can Jordan make his dream come true?

Newbery Honoree Rajani LaRocca pens a beautiful novel-in-verse about Reha, the only Indian American student at her school. Reha is torn between her family, with their traditions and high expectations of her, and school, where she feels different and unable to share who she really is. But when her mom gets really sick, she knows she needs to do everything in her power to help her mom get better.

Anna leaves her home in Taiwan for the “beautiful country,” the Chinese word for America. But moving to a new place is so much harder than she ever dreamed, especially when her parents struggle with making enough money and Anna struggles with the language and encounters bullies at school. This is an honest book about the challenges of being an immigrant in America.

In this compelling story by Aida Salazar, a young girl named Lula Viramontes is a farm worker alongside her family in California in 1965. Her dreams include joining a Mexican traveling circus, but such dreams seem far away when she spends her days in dangerous working conditions. When she meets labor rights activists, she realizes that she might have bigger dreams than she ever realized.