It's
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
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and #IMWAYR day
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March 10, 2026 by Aladdin
ARC provided by the publisher
Meli and Roxy go to the same school in Florida and know each other, but have never really gotten along. Roxy is the class president and popular soccer player, while Meli is happy hanging out with her two best friends, James and Janette. When their parents are dating, the girls aren't happy, but their brothers, Ben and Benji, are ecstatic, because they are friends. Carlos, Roxy's dad, is a real estate agent who has helped, Eva, Meli's mom, look for a new house. When the parents announce their engagement over a family dinner on the last day of school AND drop the bombshell that they will all be moving into the same house that they need to renovate before the August wedding, the girls are not at all pleased. They are each dealing with things in their own lives, like Meli's scoliosis and her father who is working in Spain, and Roxy's mean friends and her mother who is struggling with her mental health and has moved to New Jersey to be with her own mother. . After some time together, they realize that their parents seem to be complete opposites, so they come up with a "Disaster Plan" to break them up. It doesn't seem hard to do when Eva gets up early on the weekends and starts vacuuming before everyone is awake, but the girls help the process along by giving the father decaf coffee and escalating any differences. They pretend that there are bats in the house (but real bats are found), and eventually ramp up their sabotage to involve paint, styrofoam peanuts, and a fan. This, as well as foundational problems in the house, causes their parents to fight, and even though invitations have already been mailed, the wedding is called off. Both Meli and Roxy realize that they actually want their parents to get together. They enlist their friends and brothers to do work around the house in hopes of making their parents happy enough to go through with the wedding, but will it work?
Strengths: See how easy it is to get parents out of the picture WITHOUT killing them? It's much more common to have parents have to work out of town or struggle with issues that make it hard to take care of their children. Also, there are a lot of students dealing with blended families, and there is all manner of different kinds of drama involved in that. I liked that Meli and Roxy didn't get along at first mainly due to perceived differences and misunderstandings rather than any visceral dislike of each other. It was cute that their brothers were such great friends. I also enjoyed the fact that the parents had very different styles, so there was some work to be done. The other big positive of this was the casual inclusion of Meli's scoliosis brace! I'm always glad to see that health issue representated, since I wore a brace in middle school and have had two students recently who do as well. This was a humorous, upbeat look at what could have been a difficult situation if people hadn't had more grace.
Weaknesses: The choco taco was discontinued in 2022, so the characters are unlikely to be eating one. Is that picky or what? I wasn't a huge fan of the Disaster Plan, but the girls do come to regret it.
What I really think: This is a great choice for readers who want to read about blended families, like Burke's An Occasionally Happy Family, Leavitt's North of Supernova, Lynch's Reel Life, Palmer's Love You Like a Sister, or Youngblood's Love Like Sky. I'm definitely ordering a copy and think it will circulate very well.
Strengths: See how easy it is to get parents out of the picture WITHOUT killing them? It's much more common to have parents have to work out of town or struggle with issues that make it hard to take care of their children. Also, there are a lot of students dealing with blended families, and there is all manner of different kinds of drama involved in that. I liked that Meli and Roxy didn't get along at first mainly due to perceived differences and misunderstandings rather than any visceral dislike of each other. It was cute that their brothers were such great friends. I also enjoyed the fact that the parents had very different styles, so there was some work to be done. The other big positive of this was the casual inclusion of Meli's scoliosis brace! I'm always glad to see that health issue representated, since I wore a brace in middle school and have had two students recently who do as well. This was a humorous, upbeat look at what could have been a difficult situation if people hadn't had more grace.
Weaknesses: The choco taco was discontinued in 2022, so the characters are unlikely to be eating one. Is that picky or what? I wasn't a huge fan of the Disaster Plan, but the girls do come to regret it.
What I really think: This is a great choice for readers who want to read about blended families, like Burke's An Occasionally Happy Family, Leavitt's North of Supernova, Lynch's Reel Life, Palmer's Love You Like a Sister, or Youngblood's Love Like Sky. I'm definitely ordering a copy and think it will circulate very well.
E ARC provided by the publisher
Ivy is an avid violinist whose mother Charlotte is a math teacher and whose father travels with his Bluegrass band, Will Presnell and the Misty Mountain Boys. When Ivy gets sick, she and her best friend Priya don't think it's serious, but it turns out to be COVID. Two months later, Ivy is still weak and tired, suffering from long Covid. Since her Uncle Cam and his husband Steve run a bed and breakfast in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, they invite Ivy and her mother to stay there for the summer, even offering to pay Charlotte to help out, since she won't be able to teach summer school. Everly House is in a building that had been a tuberculosis sanitarium, and there's even a portrait of Jessie Pearl, one of the patients, with a dulcimer, and Ivy stays in the Jessie Room. When she naps, which she does frequently, she dreams about Jessie, who communicates about things like using a feather pick for the dulcimer, and also provides flashbacks to what her life was like in the sanitarium. When her strength allows, Ivy learns to play dulcimer, makes biscuits with the cook, Celeste, takes trips into town with her mother, and does some research into Jessie's life, even reading Murphy's Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure She finds that the portrait was painted by another patient named Louise Hall, who got better and married the groundskeeper. Louise turns out to be Celeste's great grandmother! Ivy finds a necklace of Jessie's buried in a box, but loses it when she goes back home for a visit. Charlotte has decided to look for a job so that the family can move to Asheville, so they need to pack up their belongings. Ivy texts Priya to look for it, but she dreams that Jessie tells her that the necklace is where it belongs, and finds it back with the contents of the box. In her research, Ivy finds out that after two years, Jessie was well enough to leave, and had a number of children. She manages to find one of them, Mrs. Williams, who visits Everyly House. When Ivy sings the ballad about Jessie that she has been composing for Mrs. Williams, it turns out to be a tune that her mother sang frequently! Ivy's parents buy a new house, start marriage counseling, and Jessie performs her ballad with her dad's band since she is finally feeling better.
Strengths: Occasionally, there are historical novels that are so good that I have to buy them, even though I don't have as many readers for historical fiction as I would like. This is definitely one of them. I loved the representation of Ivy's illness, the bed and breakfast setting, the parent's marital problems, and the way that the two stories were woven together. I also enjoyed the quiet ways that Ivy found to amuse herself, and how she was able to combine her father's love of the violin with her mother's love of classical music. Ivy's research is realistically portrayed, and it was such fun that she was able to hunt down Jessie's daughter... especially when she calls and ends up talking to a neighbor who is related. I would have absolutely adored this when I was in middle school.
Weaknesses: The house that Ivy's family buys is described as having painted brick that is fresh and inviting. No! Painting brick should be a federal crime. You can't unpaint it. The same goes for wooden furniture. Just... don't. The book has a quiet feel to it, which some readers won't like, but but historical fiction fans will appreciate all of the details about the past.
What I really think: This is a great addition to a middle school collection, since there are so few good representations of COVID, and today's readers barely remember it. Wendell's Light and Air is another good title, and readers who liked Fusco's The Secret of Honeycake, Johnson's The Blossoming Summer, or Jensen's Lilac and the Switchback will be glad to pick this one up as well.
Weaknesses: The house that Ivy's family buys is described as having painted brick that is fresh and inviting. No! Painting brick should be a federal crime. You can't unpaint it. The same goes for wooden furniture. Just... don't. The book has a quiet feel to it, which some readers won't like, but but historical fiction fans will appreciate all of the details about the past.
What I really think: This is a great addition to a middle school collection, since there are so few good representations of COVID, and today's readers barely remember it. Wendell's Light and Air is another good title, and readers who liked Fusco's The Secret of Honeycake, Johnson's The Blossoming Summer, or Jensen's Lilac and the Switchback will be glad to pick this one up as well.
January 20, 2026 by Calkins Creek
Copy provided by the publisher
It's hard to believe that Little Women has remained in print for over 150 years, but the fact that it still captures the imagination of young readers is no doubt rooted in the fact that Alcott based the book on her own family and life. Framing Alcott's life around ten habits for becoming a writer, Hannigan shows how these habits helped Alcott develop the skills she needed to not only enable her to provide for her family through her writing, but how she was able to fashion such long enduring classics.
Fans of Alcott's work will be familiar with the basics of her life, and the text shows the deprivations the family suffered without laboring over the fact that the father's strange habits were responsible for the often horrible conditions. If you've read Whelan's 2008 Fruitlands, you'll know that Bronson Alcott had some very strange ideas that caused his family endless grief. The book also touches on the family's relationships with notable authors of the time, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson. There's even a bit about Alcott's involvement in nursing during the Civil War.
Moore's brightly colored illustrations capture the spirit of both watercolors and pencil drawings, and capture details of life in the 1800s well. Clothes, toys, furniture, and even outdoor environments offer a visual background to Alcott's family and writing life. The end notes include daguerreotypes and artwork of all four sisters; I don't know that I've ever seen depictions of the other sisters before. There's also a photograph of the Alcott's writing desk and the interior of Orchard House.
There is a wealth of back matter in the book, including a list of the ten habits for becoming a writer (which really needs to be made into a poster!), a great timeline, and a list of resources (which includes Samanta Seiple's 2019 Louisa on the Front Lines: Louisa May Alcott and the Civil War, a book I haven't read but need to!). There is also a chart comparing the people and events of Alcott's real life with those in her books, which is the best listing of these similarities that I have seen.
There is no shortage of books about Alcott, from Noyes' A Hopeful Heart , McNees' The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, and MacCall's The Revelation of Louisa May for adults to picture books like Krull's Louisa May's Battle: How the Civil War Led to Little Women. I liked that this book focused on the process of writing and showed how Alcott's adherence to these principles served her well.
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