#MIDDLE-GRADE FOR ADULTS

[silentkpublishing]

THE LAND BEFORE SNOW

IF TIME STANDS STILL ANYWHERE, IT’S AT BEDE. IF GHOSTS HAUNT ANYWHERE, IT’S IN BEDE HALL. But ghosts are nothing compared to the challenges haunting a curmudgeonly building with a desire for eternal life. BEDE HALL WAS ALIVE BUT EVEN IN BEDE, IMMORTALITY WON’T LAST FOREVER! History comes and goes. Empires rise and fall, civilizations flourish and cultures collide. The laws of probability…

[aroaceleovaldez]

Hiii! I hope this ask doesn’t come off as rude or pushy but I just have some questions about your opinion on Rick Riordan since I’m new the space of author critiquing.

I guess I’ll add I’m pretty young and a bit sensitive when it comes to things I like, so I automatically assumed since you post so much PJO content you liked his writing. But based on some of your posts, was I wrong? Again, I don’t want to sound pushy, I’m just new to being critical and honest when it comes to authors I like and would like to know your opinion on Rick Riordan specifically. Is he a bad writer? I just got wrath of the triple goddess and I’m not sure if I want to read it based on some of your posts.

Entirely focusing on writing itself and not the content within: I like Rick's old writing. His style when writing first series is dramatically different from his newer material, which I feel has significantly dropped in quality. A lot of the newer stuff feels very unpolished and gratuitous (towards the audience for marketing purposes, not his own interests) and he has a serious bathos problem that stunts the majority of the humor and sincerity that once existed in the franchise - and often severely gets in the way of a lot of attempts at inclusion and representation, to its detriment. Not to mention how condescending it feels towards the reader/presumed audience. It's also very clear he's trying to riff off of his previous success, including directly lifting previous sections and minorly rewriting them to try and achieve the same effect (not in a call-back manner, but just copying his own work).

I won't say his old writing is like, my 100% favorite or the end-all-be-all of literature. I have plenty of authors whose writing is more something that I think is structurally admirable. But Rick's original series writing is good! It became a pop culture staple for a reason! But the quality has dipped so severely as the series progress that it's hard to ignore and it's becoming increasingly difficult to enjoy the books for me because of this. Particularly very recent books like TSATS to me are so excessively full of simple structural errors and similar that it's baffling to me how it even got published or how we got here.

I think out of his post-first series writing, his works I've enjoyed the most are MCGA and Demigods of Olympus - particularly leaning towards the latter. It's simple but very enjoyable to me. TKC to me is mostly fine and enjoyable, and HoO is Just Okay. TOA is tolerable. TSATS and the marketing trilogy though are kind of unbearable for me.

I do love the franchise as a whole and it means a lot to me, which is exactly why I feel so strongly about the drop-off in quality recently. It feels like an insult to something I love and know can be better and has been better in the past - not from a personal perspective, but from as much of an unbiased perspective I can give as someone who has studied writing. So if he's a "bad writer" in general is kind of up to discretion i suppose.

[blueskittlesart]

just wanted to say i enjoy cottontail a lot and can’t wait to buy it when the full graphic novel is available, whenever that may be :)

screenshotting this and sending it to publishers instead of my manuscript

[studiolemonboy]

Illustration from the middle grade cosmic horror comic I ‘m writing: CHERRY CREEK PARANORMAL. It’s about a club of middle school cryptid hunters in 1990s New England. Two of our intrepid club members, Alejandro and Christine, getting chased by one of the terrifying mutants wreaking havoc on their town. What cryptid should I draw next? Lmk what you think

[libraryspectre]

I'm of the belief that horror for children doesn't need to be (and often isn't) less scary than horror for adults. Like any other genre, it's more about handling topics in a child-appropriate way, and maybe addressing fears that are more relevant to children than they are to adults. Horror for children can often hit just as hard as an adult, especially if you're an adult that strongly remembers what it was like to be a kid.

Take The Nest by Kenneth Oppel as an example (spoilers ahead). The main character is a young boy who has a newborn brother. There's something unspecified wrong with the baby - all he knows is that the house is tense, his parents are crying a lot, and making a lot of trips to the hospital. He's visited in his dreams by angels who offer to "fix' the baby, and he accepts, only to learn that these angels are actually wasps who are planning to eat the baby and replace him with a replica they're building in their nest. He tries to take back the offer, but the wasps don't understand why he wouldn't want a new, perfect brother to replace his sick one. In the climatic scene he's huddled in the bathroom with his baby brother as millions of wasps swarm the house.

That book is TERRIFYING. I read it at 25 and felt like my throat was closing up at some parts. Despite this, its intended audience is 8-12 year olds. Many of the fears are more relevant to children - feeling helpless in an adult world, adults not giving you complete information, a sibling taking up all of your parents' attention and energy. But this is also a book about eugenics, even if it never says so explicitly. It's a good introduction to the concept in a way kids can relate to and understand, but it's not any less horrifying as an adult. It features other things that are scary at any age, like swarms of insects, someone you love being replaced by a copy, and the extremely creepy idea that a human child could be born from a wasp nest.

That's why I love reading middle-grade horror in particular! It's a chance to reconnect with childhood fear, and the balancing act of handling serious topics in a child-appropriate way is fascinating to me. Oftentimes horror for this age group is very inventive, because there are common tropes and content that's off-limits. And every once in awhile I find something that is genuinely scary at any age. I love that.

[valewritessss]

I hate it when people want the actual books to have some non-middle grade appropriate things in them.

Like, yes, I get wanting some dark Percy or whatever but realistically, Rick would never make Percy do some vile shit because it’s a middle grade book. And I’m talking about the really vile things people have written in fanfics that would make the book 10x darker.

I understand that most of us are past middle-grade ages but that age category is still the main target.

“Rick’s a coward for not doing this” or maybe he’s writing age appropriate stuff for the age range he specializes in. Don’t get me wrong some things would actually be cool if they happened but others, are actually too much.

This especially goes to people who want Rick to actually write ~things~ happening with percabeth and other popular ships. THEY ARE MINORS. RICK IS AN ADULT. THE BOOKS ARE FOR MIDDLE-GRADE.

Rick didn’t write “they had sex to have babies” when he was writing a book about how Greek gods came to be, what makes you think he would write something even more descriptive for his usual stories.

Yes, there are some mature topics in different stories, but they are topics that are addressed in a way that doesn’t surpass the middle-grade line.

Write fanfics about it all you want but complaining because Percy murdering his whole family in a fit of rage(I’ve seen this before okay) is not actually canon is crazy.

[littleeyesofpallas]

I have always loved Molly Knox Ostertag's work, in particular the really cute, heartwarming tact of the Witch Boy trilogy's trans allegory and the way it feels so well built to walk that fine line of appropriately nuanced but still perfectly digestible for its intended teen audience.

Well The Deep Dark is more of precisely that style of writing and it blows me away just as much now as Witch Boy did the first time I read it. It's exactly the kind of book I wish I'd had as a kid, and the sort of thing that lights a little hopeful flame in the jaded dark corners of my heart. It's the sort of thing that helps me feel optimistic about a generation of kids who will grow up with this kind of story as their formative personal mythos.

I know I don't usually do reviews or recommendation on this blog so I dunno who this is for really, and it certainly won't have any particular reach, but if you find yourself with the chance to, I really can't recommend The Deep Dark enough. And of course everything else Molly Knox Ostertag has had a hand in, even the one's she's not been the sole author on.

[eraofprocrastination]

was adding an obnoxiously long reblog to @stygianfalcatasword's post about the opening of House of Hades and now I'm reflecting on the impact of middle-grade books when I was a middle-grade-aged reader so here's an essay, enjoy.

I was one of those kids that got into the YA genre before even becoming a teenager and I'm only now realizing that it's because teen fantasy/fiction had so much more emotional rawness to it that I needed to see. Even though it wasn't my intended age range, I needed characters who experienced rage and held grudges and felt depressed. And I could only find those in YA novels.

The thing is, a lot of people will joke about "oh so you got into smut early? join the club." I am asexual. It has never been and never will be about the smut. Plenty of middle-grade books had (straight) romance. It was never about the love stories, either.

It was about the fact that I was a 12-year-old who needed to turn to 16 to 18-year-old characters to find people whose emotional states felt "relatable." I already had a good dose of trauma by that age, so reading your standard Middle School Adventure series didn't hold a lot of interest for me, particularly because the characters were written by these adult authors as Happy Innocent Children who maybe cry when things get bad.

There were very very few middle-grade characters who felt grief and rage and injustice. I grew up reading kid's magazine articles about climate change and the extinction of the white rhino and the fact that a penny costs more than a penny to make. I understood the unfairness around me far better than the characters in the books I read, so I looked for books with darker themes and angrier worlds because those just made sense.

Call me cynical and jaded or whatever, but I think that adults constantly underestimate the amount of responsibility and anger that "young kids" are able to feel, especially within classroom environments where acting out emotionally is so forbidden. As a middle schooler, I felt like my "inner world" was messed up because it didn't match what all the adults around me were telling me I should see.

So yes I loved reading YA fantasy (even with unnecessary smut), because at least these were characters who felt their pain and could take action about it. I could find girls who felt anger and swung their swords about it. I could read about corrupt government and world-level crises and then put myself into the heads of the teenagers/adults who had to handle those things.

I read books about mental health crises and suicide because I understood them and needed to see characters reflect that. I heard a lot of "oh so it's the books that are making you feel depressed?" and NO, I read those books about depression because I felt depressed and I needed reassurance that people do in fact experience that. I read books about queer characters because I was queer — they didn't make me queer. I went looking for stories that reflected my experiences, and there weren't many in my age range. So what did I do? Age myself up.

And all of those books were intended for 16-18 year olds and I was 12 and I Did Not Care because no literary 12yo was feeling what I was feeling.

Not a lot of authors in the younger category understood what kind of responsibility and emotional turmoil a person can develop within the first decade-and-a-half of life.

This comes back to why Rick Riordan's writing is so deeply beloved to me, because he takes these children who are already relatable through their personalities (I could do a whole other rant about personality diversity) and then throws in truckloads of trauma and balances it all out well enough for it to be appropriate reading for an eleven-year-old.

With RR books, I didn't have to risk the "what if there's smut/violence/*enter other triggers here*" game in order to find mental states that resembled mine — because I did understand on some level that even though the YA books were more relatable, they were still pretty damaging in terms of material.

I could be 9 and open up The Lightning Thief and Luke would already be embittered against the gods. I could be 12 and read about Reyna's trauma and unresolved anger, and Percy's willingness to commit several murders, and Nico's shame about his sexuality, and every character's survivor's guilt/depression/justice complex — and still have what was essentially a fun middle-grade book.

Because somehow RR understands that yeah, there are 13yo kids out there who feel rage to the levels of wanting at least the catharsis of reading a literary murder, but those kids also need to laugh and smile about giants being hit in the eye by blue plastic hairbrushes.

Anyway I think this is a big reason that the YA genre has had such a huge boom recently and also why people tend to look down on kid's lit despite the gems in it. There's a whole complex of being "intellectually/emotionally superior" if you read YA over middle grade because middle grade books are shallow.

But middle schoolers are not shallow!!! They are complex, developing human beings!!! And we don't see that accurately portrayed in books!!! Stop being cynical about the amount of violence a book needs for it not to be shallow. The Game of Thrones series (I'm judging by the show) counters that mindset very nicely.

I do understand that there's a need for happier stories in kid's lit but I would argue that there's a dearth of them in adult literature. And there are plenty of ways to characterize, humanize and validate pre-teens and early teens without throwing in violence.

There just has to be a lot more understanding in regards to what those age ranges know about their world.

[incorrectsibunaquotes]

These kids are too damn nice to their teachers, but to be fair, I also struggle with confrontation….. soooo I’d probably be smiling in their faces and calling them ‘sir’ and ‘miss’ while we all pretended we weren’t actively at war outside of school hours, too

[nomsfaultau]

what’s your favourite short fic you’ve written? Short being under 5 chapters

Lord! has 3 chapters and it’s only 52k words~

nah, actual favorite shortie is The Altars We Sacrifice Our Futures On. Basic synopsis: Tommy is a small orphan child who gets sacrificed to the Blood God, Technoblade. Only problem is, Philza adopted Tommy, and now Technoblade can’t actually eat him (Do you want to let the cultists get away with subpar sacrifices? Are you crazy!? Where’s the quality control!). Between all the goofs Techno and Tommy start to bond, with Techno getting some wholesome character development going. Techno is a giant grumpy tsundere about adopting Tommy, but is starting to go fully soft for him. At least, until Philza shows up in mama bear mode, at which point him and Techno develop an intense parental rivalry behind Tommy’s back. Ultimately, they end up in an odd assortment of found family, with Techno getting over his fear of peer pressure and disbanding his evil cult. I really love the mixture of comedy, dark comedy, fluff, and magic world building.

I got this problem in my long fics where as they progress they get more serious and dramatic. Hell just look how much crack is in the start of Mandatory Family Reunion- Anyway, it’s a real shame cause I’m a comedic genius, which gets wasted because of my natural impulse to write devastating angst. Lord! also is meant to be a comedy, but some of the dark humor started getting treated seriously it also dipped into Drama instead of Silly. But since I furiously wrote Altars in a week for a class, there was a cap on how dark I’d go, which helped maintain the levity.

[lovelyisadora]

Also when sep restarts his apprenticeship is he like. Okay so you rlly did cut out a lot of stuff huh. Wtf were u going to if I finished the apprenticeship. And marcia's like idk I didn't think that far ahead. Or like. What happens andjdndjfn I need More

quick context because this has been in my inbox for at least two years but this is about the apprenticeship arrangement in rewrite au (at least I am like 95 percent sure it is).

if Septimus had actually finished the apprenticeship, he wouldn’t have been able to take over as extraordinary wizard because of how she modified it to be age appropriate and because he went into it with little to no experience with or knowledge of magyk (in rewrite au, the extraordinary apprenticeship is more of an elite position; if the purpose is to train potential extraordinary wizards, then only apprentices who are top of their magyk classes or programs are considered). Marcia was never going to have him take over so young, but without the proper training, he couldn’t have taken over ever. so since she didn’t have a plan and never thought that far ahead anyway, and because the arrangement was always about his day to day functioning, she really was just figuring it out as she went (with no help from Silas or Sarah, but only because Marcia is the extraordinary wizard; the apprenticeship hiding the fact that she is his legal guardian is hers to figure out as far as they are concerned).

the hardest part, since she did want him to take over eventually, would have been keeping the arrangement a secret and finding how to prepare him in a way that qualified him without him realizing what was really going on. she would have pushed him to higher education, would have found ways to introduce new books and extra lessons and spells in a way that didn’t clue him in that she was teaching him the way he should have always been taught. anything, so that when she was ready and he expressed interest in replacing her, it could happen. but because he doesn’t have the easiest apprenticeship even modified as it is, none of this happens. it all falls apart because it wasn’t sustainable, but also because he wasn’t ready and neither was she (which she did warn Silas and Sarah about).

she tells him this, after the first three months of his restarted apprenticeship, but only when he asks. because he knew, after they finally talked about it when it all fell apart that the actual apprenticeship was different, but he hadn’t realized just how much. he’s taking magyk classes because Marcia warned him she wasn’t going to bridge his gap in knowledge. he would be more than prepared for some of it, but nowhere near ready for a lot of it. if he was serious about recommitting to the extraordinary apprenticeship then the extraordinary apprenticeship was what he was getting, nothing less, and he needs do the work he missed on his own. Marcia is also Marcia, so she pushes him harder and expects more of him than other extraordinary wizards might have expected of their apprentices if they were in this situation. his first three months are very difficult as a result and he starts realizing that being the extraordinary wizard is a lot harder than it looks, that the work required to get to that position is harder than he thought, and he’s like, oh my god, Marcia, were you going to throw me into that without any of this?

telling him the second part of it, that she still wouldn’t have told him about the arrangement had he finished his original apprenticeship, is almost as hard as it would have been to cover it up. he really does not like hearing that Marcia still would have lied by omission and kept it from him. he thinks that he would have deserved to know, had he not found out by accident when it fell apart.

Marcia ends the conversation there though, to his frustration, because there’s no point in talking about what would have been. he knows now. he’s doing the apprenticeship now, the right way. they’ve already discussed the arrangement, at length. they don’t need to discuss it any further.

except they do, because they resolved it without resolving it. if Marcia kept this from him, if she would have continued to keep this from him, what else must she be keeping from him? he never fully trusts her again.

[jesncin]

I get that Hellblazer/Constantine are adult and For Mature Reader stories, but I kinda can't help but eyeroll when people think the idea of a Constantine middle grade story is impossible.

Maybe it's because people's stereotypical idea of a MG graphic novel is like Baby Sitter's Club or Dogman (no shade, those are great comics) but this idea that middle grade can't handle dark or mature topics just because of its target audience isn't fair to kids' media in general. I get that the existing Constantine MG graphic novel wasn't dark either and went for humor-adventure instead (I still like it too), but it doesn't mean the concept of "tonally authentic Hellblazer MG graphic novel" is out of the question.

Think Series of Unfortunate Events meets Courtney Crumrin, a space for kids to feel validated over how unfair and terrifying the world is. That's at least how I'd approach it.

[therobishow]

I am once again calling for book rants. It was so much fun the last time, and I crave more.

Do you have a long standing grudge against a book you read in middle school? Have you gotten swept up by hype only to find that everyone lied to you and the book is trash? Do you burn with rage over the way an author portrayed your favorite mythology or folklore? Is there a book or series that you once loved, but now makes you cringe every time you think about it?

Do you want to vent all of it out to someone who won't judge you, or argue with you, but will simply accept all your feelings as their own?

Hi, that person is me. Send me an ask, anonymous or not, and tell me everything you've wanted to say. Offer me your anger, your frustration, your hatred. I will hold it for you. I will take it into my heart and make it my own.

It can be any genre you want, any demographic. I will accept it all. Even if James Patterson gets involved again. (I'm not scared of you, James!!)

[mercuryislove]

nothing like reading a mediocre book to inspire you to write

[mollyhats]

Kids Book Recs for Palestine

Are you looking for a way to aid a family in need while also getting a leg up on your shopping?

Are you looking forward to seeing friends/relatives in the next few months only to realize "oh no, what do I bring?" Have a baby shower you need to bring a book to instead of a card? Got a kiddo at home who absolutely tears through every book you give them--or, conversely, refuses to open them?

Hi, I'm Molly. In my day job, I work in the children's section of an indie book store, connecting patrons to books they and their young loved ones will love. And I'm offering the same service from the comfort of your own inbox! Unlike online rec lists (which often fall into broad categories or only offer info you could get from the back cover), I will walk you through what makes me think a certain book will appeal to your audience and what content to be aware of going in, and you can ask follow up questions and clarify what does and does not work.

How it works:

Step 1

Send me proof that you d*nated to Marah's Family's Gaza Evacuation Fund. (Tumblr post here, verification info here)

Step 2

Message or ask me proof along with as much of the following information as possible

Age of recipient

(This can be approximate; if you're looking for YA for an adult, you can say that)

Reading level if applicable

(Listing books they've read recently is helpful here, e.g. Magic Tree House for newer readers. You can also think page count, illustrations or no, etc)

Books they enjoy

(Consider especially if you have some idea of why. For example, somebody might like Percy Jackson for the snarky narration, the epic quests, OR the weaving the fantastic into modern America)

Things they like to read about (or just enjoy in general)

(These can be tropes, topics, character types, general genres. For younger kids, if you know their favorite animals or activities, that's a great jumping off point. If they prefer graphic novels, here's the place to say so.)

Any concerns

if there's anything you want me to particularly warn for (such as the dog dying), lmk here. I'll still give you some basic tws but these are ones to keep in mind through the whole process.

Step 3

I'll get back to you with some recommendations, and we can go from there.

Short example conversation

(this was a casual conversation with a friend 2 years ago. My repertoire has grown exponentially since then)

TL;DR give to a family stranded in Gaza, and get professional, personalized assistance in finding the perfect board, picture, middle grade, or YA book(s) for you or a loved one.