Category: Middle Grade

Aug 25

Bite-Sized Reviews of The Thing About Jellyfish, Unwritten, and The Girl with More than One Heart

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 12 ★★★★½

I’ve got three middle grade reviews for you today: two contemporaries and a contemporary fantasy. I hope these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! This book is really interesting because it’s written from the POV of a character who seems like she’s probably on the autism spectrum (but it’s never explicitly said, and she might not even be diagnosed as such). I actually sort of love this because I have a kid with a similar background—often in life you don’t get a definitive “this is the label that your kid has and it makes so much sense and everyone needs to know this label and act accordingly.” I’ve found raising kids to be a lot more complicated than that. Anyway, this book deals with the death of Suzy’s best friend, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. Early on, we learn that something happened between Suzy and Franny—you… Read more »

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May 04

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty: Review & Giveaway

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Giveaways (Ended), Middle Grade, Reviews 16 ★★★★½

This book was a breath of fresh air, with a uniquely intelligent MC who we can truly root for! What Fed My Addiction: A mathematical mind. When Lucy was struck by lightning, she woke up with genius-level mathematical skills: acquired savant syndrome is the technical name for it. This, in itself, is really interesting, but Lucy’s mathematical skills affect the way she sees the world in so many ways. For instance, she “sees” numbers as colors, sees complex geometrical shapes in the world around her, and she is constantly counting and calculating everything. In addition, we’re given many tiny glimpses into the way her mind truly works—little details that add so much to her character. An example is how every number in the book is written numerically (even if it’s something like, “that 1 girl we met”). It’s these little touches that make the book fun. I loved being inside Lucy’s unique… Read more »

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Nov 01

Team BFF: Race to the Finish by Stacia Deutsch & other Girls Who Code Books

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 12

Today I’m featuring the Girls Who Code books on Feed Your Fiction Addiction. These books are aimed at middle school girls and encourage them to think about coding and technology in a new way. Since 2012, Girls Who Code has taught computing skills to and inspired over 10,000 girls across America–and they’re just at the beginning of their mission to close the gender gap in tech. There are two fiction books that follow a diverse group of girls learning to code, a nonfiction book that’s described as “Part how-to, part inspiration, and all fun,” and a coding journal of sorts where girls can find ideas for coding and learn to use the things they love as inspiration for coding. The second fiction book and the journal were both published yesterday, so I’m going to focus on those, but my 13-year-old daughter and I also read the first fiction book (The Friendship Code), so I’m going to talk about… Read more »

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Apr 20

Little Fun Club Blog Tour & $50 Giveaway: A Lit Box for Kids 0-12!

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Giveaways (Ended), Middle Grade 8

I thought I’d try out this fun book club for kids and see what they have to offer! I love the fact that they send high-quality and award-winning books. I told them that my daughter is 12 years old, so they sent books for her age group. They have really specific age groups, so you get something that fits your child perfectly. The website also says that they ask questions about your child’s preferences (we didn’t do that for the tour, but they managed to fit my kids pretty perfectly). What Did We Get? We received three books in our box. The box was actually slightly damaged when I received it (there was a hole in the top), but the books were packed nicely with plenty of packing paper, so they weren’t affected at all. I loved that the books were wrapped up prettily—it made my daughter feel like… Read more »

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Feb 20

Batgirl at Super Hero High by Lisa Yee: Review

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 6 ★★★★

These books are so incredibly adorable and fun. My daughter loves the high school take on superheroes, and I have to admit that I kind of love them too. What Fed My Addiction: Girl genius. Unlike most of the other super heroes, Batgirl is just an ordinary girl—with extraordinary smarts. Her tech savvy makes her special and it gives her an edge that the other supers don’t have. A sense of belonging. Batgirl has doubts about her ability to fit in at Super Hero High even though she has friends there. She doesn’t know if she can be a “real” super hero since she doesn’t have any innate abilities. She can’t keep up with the other students in a lot of areas (especially gym, where there are some pretty high expectations of super heroes!). She has to learn to rely on and trust her strengths and not worry so much about her… Read more »

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Sep 21

Bite-Sized Middle Grade Reviews – Nocturnals Books 1 & 2, Towers Falling, Egg & Spoon

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 4 ★★★★

A few quick reviews of some of the middle grade books I’ve read (or listened to) recently. Hopefully these bite-sized reviews will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! The Mysterious Abductions by Tracy Hecht Series: The Nocturnals #1 Published by Fabled Films Press on 4/19/16 Genres: Middle Grade, Mystery Pages: 232 Source: BEA My content rating: MG (Nothing particularly scary or inappropriate) ***These books can be read by Middle Graders, but are also appropriate for much younger kids, especially if read aloud (at home or in a classroom setting).*** My rating: A flabbergastifying adventure under the stars! “The characters are delightful and the nighttime landscape is captivating. It was just as I expected—because the best stories always take place in the dark!—R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps The Nocturnals features three unlikely friends: Dawn, a serious fox, Tobin, a sweet pangolin and Bismark, the loud mouthed, pint sized sugar glider. The stories all play out in… Read more »

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Sep 15

The Copper Gauntlet and The Bronze Key by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare – Bite-Sized Reviews

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 4 ★★★★

***NOTE: This review is for the second and third books in a series and may contain spoilers for the first book. To read my thoughts on The Iron Trial (the first book), click HERE.*** I had to catch up on this series when I saw that the latest was coming out (the third out of five listed on Goodreads). Both my son and I really enjoyed the first book. He said that it had all of the best qualities from his favorite series, which was high praise from him. I was a little nervous since it had been a long time since I’d read book one (we’d picked up book two at a Scholastic book fair, but we hadn’t gotten to it yet), but I picked the story back up really easily—there were plenty of reminders, which is especially nice for a middle grade book. Read on for my thoughts …… Read more »

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Jul 29

Supergirl at Super Hero High by Lisa Yee – A Soaring Review

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 8 ★★★★

This book is SO much fun, and it’s perfect for MG and early YA readers. My daughter and I both read this one and both thoroughly enjoyed it. It provides lots of super hero action but also has a sweet message about believing in yourself. I highly recommend this for MG readers! This is the second book in the DC Super Hero Girls Series, but it can definitely be read alone (neither my daughter nor I had read the first one and we had no problem following any of the storyline). This installment focuses on Kara – AKA Supergirl – who comes to Super Hero high after the destruction of Krypton. New to Earth, Kara discovers she has powers here, but she isn’t very good at controlling them yet. When compared to the seemingly perfect teens at Super Hero High, Kara doesn’t feel like she measures up – and she wonders if… Read more »

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Jan 20

Bite Sized Reviews: The Map to Everywhere and City of Thirst by Carrie Ryan

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 3 ★★★★½

Here are some quick reviews for books I haven’t gotten around to reviewing or that I just don’t have a ton to say about. Once again, I figure a few bite sized reviews together will be enough to feed your fiction addiction! 🙂 The Map to Everywhere by Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis Series: Map to Everywhere #1 Published by Little Brown Books for Young Readers on 11/4/14 Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy Pages: 448 Source: BEA My content rating: MG (Nothing inappropriate, a little bit of MG level violence) My rating: Wherever you need to go–the Map to Everywhere can take you there. To Master Thief Fin, an orphan from the murky pirate world of the Khaznot Quay, the Map is the key to finding his mother. To suburban schoolgirl Marrill, it’s her only way home after getting stranded on the Pirate Stream, the magical waterway that connects every world in creation. With the help of a… Read more »

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Oct 24

The Taken by Inbali Iserles – Middle Grade Spotlight Review

Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction Middle Grade, Reviews 2 ★★★★

My daughter is a huge fan of the Warriors series, but we never realized until recently that Erin Hunter is actually six people! Of course, we wanted to find out more about these authors, and we discovered that one of them, Inbali Iserles, was going to be releasing a new series about magical foxes. My daughter was instantly sold and we picked up the book for review. It took me awhile to get her to read it because she’s not a big fan of ebooks, but once she picked it up, I read it right along with her, which was fun! This was a cute story that sets up the series well – it did remind me a lot of Warriors with the way that the foxes think about the human world. The book follows Isla, who is trying to find her family after their den has been invaded by a… Read more »

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