Middle School | Daddy Mojo

Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is for the curious

Children’s books can be for the curious, or the mandated. Unfortunately, elementary and middle school ages often engage in books because of the former. However, it’s those curious kids, the ones who have a basic interest in a subject and want to learn more about it, that are laying the seeds for future success at a higher level. That’s a challenging lesson to impart to younger readers for sure. Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is a chapter book aimed at middle school readers who are smart enough to realize that fire does not always equal total devastation and that life finds a way.

Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is middle-school, non-fiction whose engaging text keeps the facts coming for the curious.

Now dig this baby

Windswept is a fairy tale that those non-fairy tale reading mglit fans will dig

An anthology doesn’t always have to be allegorical. Windswept is a fantasy book that combines elements of those two categories into something that also crosses over in fables and fairy tales. To add to the trippy attitude of the book it has the all-seeing eye that’s firmly placed below a tree. And this is before you know anything about the plot, which is about children being literally swept away by the winds, never to be seen again.

Windswept is a book that blends little-known Scandinavian elements to create age-appropriate dread for the fairy tale reluctant set.

Not all fairies have wands or sing songs

Alcatoe and the Turnip Child, retro/modern charming graphic novel magic

Fables get a bad rap with upper elementary and middle school students. I taught a class to ESL students that were comprised mostly of fables, you know, those stories that teach lessons. And if there’s one thing that some kids that age don’t want, it’s a lesson. Alcatoe and the Turnip Child is not a fable. It’s also not a fairy tale and not entirely a folktale either. To some readers, Alcatoe could have elements of all of those things, but for us it’s a beautifully paced book about kids, a grumpy witch, the quaint town they live in, and magic.

Alcatoe and the Turnip Child is a graphic novel with a timeless vibe, a slightly evil undercurrent and an irrepressibly quirky demeanor.

Don’t call it a folk story, unless you want to

Dead Flip, retro teen scary vibes with a friendship backbeat

The 80s were chaotic, riddled with bad fashion that people thought was cool, produced some fabulous music, and is entertaining legions of teens nowadays. For the record ‘nowadays’ is possibly the oldest sounding word in the English language and is usually followed up with ‘back in my day’. Dead Flip is mglit that is all but served up with a heaping serving of Raisin Bran, featuring the iconic dancing raisins from 1989. It’s a fun book that today’s tweens and lower teens will enjoy because of the accurate 80s and 90’s shoutouts, as well as, the age-appropriate scares and drama.

Dead Flip is tween-aimed, mglit about a haunted pinball machine that has enough creeps mixed in with the retro teen ways of the 80s and 90s.

10 years and up who want spooky vibes will dig this

Neurocomic, a graphic novel on the brain for middle school and up

The other day in the podcast and over on Youtube I mentioned that I read a graphic novel and had no idea of how to accurately describe its content. It’s not that it was bad or poorly presented; it’s just that the subject matter was high level and required a second reading. Having said that, even after reading Neurocomic twice I’m still unable to tell you the details from memory, despite the fact that I enjoyed reading it both times. That is also quite ironic or appropriate, given the fact that Neurocomic is about the brain, memories, and how they’re made, or in my case, forgotten.

Neurocomic has the seemingly impossible task of making a graphic novel on the brain approachable and entertaining and nails it to the cerebellum, in a good way.

A graphic novel that makes the brain understandable? Yup.

Molly and the Machine, mglit that works well for ages 8 and (way) up

Mglit does not have to be based in the 80s to be entertaining. I say that because it seems that a couple of the books that we’ve read recently have had ties to that fabulous decade. Certainly, a major reason for that is the absence of screens. There’s no device that kids have to occupy them, solve their problems, do their research or look at pictures of giant robot footprints. That’s what Molly from Molly and the Machine might’ve done when she first started her adventures. It’s an mglit book that takes off its shoes and wades knee-deep in the river of fun reading. This is also an example of mglit that skews younger, allowing ages eight and up the chance to enjoy the adventure.

Molly and the Machine is a true mglit book that those mid-elementary readers are able to read, yet hold interest for middle school students also.

A book that’s friends with Spy SChool

Road Trip Earth, a science graphic novel for the non-science sect

There are different literary vehicles for upper elementary through middle school students to get their Earth science on. A commonality between most of the interesting ones is that there is not a narrative device. Sure there are dozens to hundreds of engaging photos and text that do the trick but organizing this non-fiction stuff in a way that keeps them reading is challenging. They might jump in for one nugget, but it’s a different story when trying to lock down their attention for an entire book. Road Trip Earth is a book from Molly Bloom, Marc Sanchez, and Sanden Totten, the folks who created the Brains On! podcast and seems intent on shifting expectations, or at least reading duration.

Road Trip Earth is a science graphic novel that juggles laughs, education, reference material, entertainment and more without dropping a ball.

Science, meet graphic novel, graphic novel, meet science

The Extincts, Quest for the Unicorn Horn, graphic novel go-to for 8 and up

When I saw the cover to The Extincts, Question For The Unicorn Horn it was an immediate connection to The O.W.C.A. Files. For a period in our life, when our kids were older than five and younger than 11, we saw Phineas and Ferb at least once a day. Thus, we’ve seen The O.W.C.A. Files, which was a stand-alone episode that aired after that series finale. In The Extincts, Quest for the Unicorn Horn, we see a cat, bird, frog, and wooly mammoth-looking creature all wearing spy gear and running towards the reader. It’s a graphic novel by New York Times Bestselling Illustrator Scott Magoon that does much the same in that it jumps into your hands like a kitten that wants its belly rubbed. And I say that in the best of all ways possible because I love it when a cat or kitten jumps near my hand and wants to be scratched.

The Extincts, Quest For The Unicorn Horn perfectly melds action, humor, STEM and more puns, into a graphic novel for ages 8 and up.

Start the school year off with your favorite new graphic novel