Category: Favorites

As a young girl, Tenar is taken from her family, identified as the reincarnation of the highest ranked priestess at a holy site. Her life is to be a lonely, limited one, carrying out rituals for the Nameless Ones, but things are shaken up when an unauthorized visitor comes. The second book in the Earthsea fantasy series, this starts slow but becomes a page-turner by the end.

Jimmy is a 14-year-old living in New York City. He’s a smart kid who lives with his grandmother, but he skips a lot of school and is probably a little depressed. One day he returns home to find that his dad, who has been in jail most of his life, has come to take him away. This is ultimately a sad novel from almost start to finish – Jimmy’s father is trying to figure himself out, and it’s clear early on that there is not going to be a happy resolution. It’s compelling and well-written, and…

A collection of four short stories about Asa, each detailing a moment in his life between the end of first grade up through seventh grade, dealing with friendship, love, and complicated parents. This was one of my favorites from when I was in middle school, and it holds up even better than I had expected — it manages to be repeatedly heartbreaking without being saccharine or maudlin or cheap.

Martha is a twelve-year-old from Madison, Wisconsin, about to leave for her family’s annual trip to her grandmother’s home on Cape Cod, when she’s given a page from the journal of a classmate named Olive who died in an accident earlier that summer. She barely knew Olive, but the entry says that Olive wanted to visit the ocean, become a writer, and be friends with Martha. Her visit to her grandmother’s is a growing experience, with Martha thinking about death, love, and becoming a writer herself. A beautiful and melancholy book, older in themes than the…