It's
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
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and #IMWAYR day
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December 9, 2025 by Simon Spotlight
Copy provided by the publisher
Originally published as Angela Darling's Isabella's Spring Break Crush in 2014. Ana Miller lives in Chicago, where it is still wintery cold for spring break. Her best friends are all traveling, but Ana's parents are too busy. Her mother is a pediatrician and her father is an accountant, who suggests that Ana work in his office over the break to earn some money. This is NOT Ana's plan. Her twin brother, Adam, doesn't mind as much, but when Ana sets out to convince their parents to plan a vacation, he goes along. Ana has quite the impressive presentation, and her parents eventually give in... to a point. Ana and Adam will fly to spend the week in Florida with their Grandma Gina. While she loves her grandmother, this doesn't sound like the best plan, especially when her grandmother mentions that a neighbor will have her grandson there as well. The neighbor, Lillian, is very quiet and reclusive, which doesn't bode well for Mason. Once in Florida, however, Ana is sucked into the fun of visiting an orange Grove, watching The Sound of Music as Grandma Gina sings enthusiastically along, and eating ice cream. When Mason turns out to be a really cute baseball player, things are looking up. The kids hang out at the pool and go to a museum, which is a lot of fun until neighbor Sonia's twin grandkids, Daniel and Daniella, get brought into the mix. Daniella seems to like Mason, and tries to get Ana interested in her brother, calling a forced movie night "a double date". When Lillian and Gina plan a nice dinner out, Ana goes shopping with her grandmother, and the two have a great time bonding over cute outfits, and Ana is glad that she is getting to spend time with her. Things are going well, but a trip to Adventure Land with Daniel and Daniella leads to some tension. A week isn't a very long time to spend with anyone, but at the end of the week Mason asks for Ana's phone number, and the two plan to text until they both spend some time in Florida over summer vacation.
Strengths: The Spotlight Sprinkles books have been wildly popular with my students; they are only 160 pages long, and have plenty of friend and boyfriend drama. This is one of my favorites, mainly because Grandma Gina is such fun. She gets up early, swims, and is always on the go. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I can remember how long a week can seem when one is twelve, and how interesting it was to meet other children on vacation. Grandma Gina's reminiscing about the long distance relationship she had with Ana's grandfather was rather sweet; mentioning it made it clear that she took Ana's emotions seriously, even if she knew that kids in Chicago and New York didn't have much of a chance for a serious relationship. The drama with Daniel and Daniella spiced things up, and the array of activities made sense. This was a fantastic vicarious spring break trip!
Weaknesses: Since I've taken exactly two spring vacations in the last forty years, I didn't have a lot of sympathy with Ana's plight. At least she didn't complain too much out loud, and she did eventually enjoy being with her grandmother. Young readers will commiserate more with her. Did appreciate the effort she put into developing a vacation pitch to her parents!
What I really think: While I would love to know who is really writing these, I am just glad to see short, middle grade romances. The original Crush series ended rather abruptly; I hope that Spotlight Sprinkles has a few titles that are original and not reworked from previous editions. Making Waves comes out 5/5/26.
Weaknesses: Since I've taken exactly two spring vacations in the last forty years, I didn't have a lot of sympathy with Ana's plight. At least she didn't complain too much out loud, and she did eventually enjoy being with her grandmother. Young readers will commiserate more with her. Did appreciate the effort she put into developing a vacation pitch to her parents!
What I really think: While I would love to know who is really writing these, I am just glad to see short, middle grade romances. The original Crush series ended rather abruptly; I hope that Spotlight Sprinkles has a few titles that are original and not reworked from previous editions. Making Waves comes out 5/5/26.
June 10, 2025 by Post Wave
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central
Starting with a brief overview of the growth of urban and suburban communities in the 1970s, this intriguing book discusses the ways in which people are trying to make cities more pleasant, sustainable places to live. After an introduction about the difficulties a variety of problems pose to urban populations, each chapter highlights different cities across the globe who are trying to mitigate the problems. This includes Berlin, whose efforts at city planning have made it one of the greenest cities in the world, and the vertical forests of Milan. Other topics include growing food in cities, using renewable energy, improving transportation, and using smart technology. There are also chapters on different historical attempts to improve city design, like the Social Palace is Guise, how different countries are working on creating the types of cities they want, and showcases of different cities that were successful in the past, like Bilbao, Spain, and Bordeaux, France.
Even as someone who enjoys living in a walkable suburb, I can see the appeal of city living. This book, which is translated from the French, has a European feel to it. It's hard to describe, but ever since I was given a translation of a Danish book as a child, I've been attracted to the modern print and small, precise pictures floating in a lot of white space that seems to define many European books, especially nonfiction titles. This is more of a middle grade book, due to its length, but could be used with younger children who have a lot of patience. I think New York City and Detroit are the only US cities that are included in this title.
The birdseye views of the components of the cities described have so much detail, and have a largely brown, green and gray color palette, which make the red and blue details really pop. Even the textures on the buildings, and the tiny trees and plants, are beautifully done. One especially fun element are the stripes along the sides of the pages which continue onto the outside, as can be seen on the cover.
While this is lacking an index or bibliography, the table of contents is very complete, and the research into both modern and historical cities seems very well done.
While there are lots of picture books about farm and country life, perhaps I have just never noticed the growing number of books about the urban landscape. Young readers who are interested in ecology and in architecture will enjoy The Cities of the Future, which is a great companion to Bartunek and Velcovsky's From Pyramids to Palaces, Sedlackova's Bustling Cities of the World, Theule's Concrete: From the Ground Up, Tardif's Metropolis, and Roeder's The Power of Architecture: 25 Modern Buildings Around the World.
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central
Starting with a brief overview of the growth of urban and suburban communities in the 1970s, this intriguing book discusses the ways in which people are trying to make cities more pleasant, sustainable places to live. After an introduction about the difficulties a variety of problems pose to urban populations, each chapter highlights different cities across the globe who are trying to mitigate the problems. This includes Berlin, whose efforts at city planning have made it one of the greenest cities in the world, and the vertical forests of Milan. Other topics include growing food in cities, using renewable energy, improving transportation, and using smart technology. There are also chapters on different historical attempts to improve city design, like the Social Palace is Guise, how different countries are working on creating the types of cities they want, and showcases of different cities that were successful in the past, like Bilbao, Spain, and Bordeaux, France.
Even as someone who enjoys living in a walkable suburb, I can see the appeal of city living. This book, which is translated from the French, has a European feel to it. It's hard to describe, but ever since I was given a translation of a Danish book as a child, I've been attracted to the modern print and small, precise pictures floating in a lot of white space that seems to define many European books, especially nonfiction titles. This is more of a middle grade book, due to its length, but could be used with younger children who have a lot of patience. I think New York City and Detroit are the only US cities that are included in this title.
The birdseye views of the components of the cities described have so much detail, and have a largely brown, green and gray color palette, which make the red and blue details really pop. Even the textures on the buildings, and the tiny trees and plants, are beautifully done. One especially fun element are the stripes along the sides of the pages which continue onto the outside, as can be seen on the cover.
While this is lacking an index or bibliography, the table of contents is very complete, and the research into both modern and historical cities seems very well done.
While there are lots of picture books about farm and country life, perhaps I have just never noticed the growing number of books about the urban landscape. Young readers who are interested in ecology and in architecture will enjoy The Cities of the Future, which is a great companion to Bartunek and Velcovsky's From Pyramids to Palaces, Sedlackova's Bustling Cities of the World, Theule's Concrete: From the Ground Up, Tardif's Metropolis, and Roeder's The Power of Architecture: 25 Modern Buildings Around the World.
And yes, I will apparently read any and all books with HENRY in the title!
September 16, 2025 by Flamingo Books
Copy provided by Young Adult Books Central
The artwork has a fuzzy, almost finger painted feel to it, which makes the sculptures appear a little less realistic, which might be a good thing for squeamish readers. While my own dog does not seem to have the... talent that Henry has at making his sculpture stand upright, I guess that goes to show how much of an artist Henry really is!
Poop is certainly funny to a certain audience, and I can see this being the absolute favorite of a three year old. The text is very short, with just a sentence or two on each page, making this a short read, just in case you have to read it aloud four or five times in a row. I liked the ground level perspective; most pages show just the humans legs, since we are seeing the world from Henry's viewpoint.
This will appeal to fans of the many recent books about dogs that have been published, like Cáceres' Hello, Tobi, Sharff's Joan in the Cone, or Otis' Hazel is All That. It also joins the pantheon of books about excrement that range from Gomi's classic 1981 Everyone Poops Finally, this is a perfect gift for the legions of young Henrys that are coming up in the world; it seems to be the new hot name. There are human Henry's represented in Simon's Horrid Henry and Bailey and Song's A Friend for Henry series, as well as Henry Quackenbush's Henry the Duck and a disproportionate number of books about hippos named Henry!
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