Books In the Middle Podcast
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Looking for booktalks for middle school students? Look no farther than this podcast. Browse through the many titles in all different genres for just the right title to get your students inspired, excited and racing to the library for a copy of the book. Looking for written reviews for more titles? Check out the blog Booksinthemiddle.Wordpress.com to expand your own library and give students more options. New episodes typically release every Monday unless it is a holiday, however during the summer months, they will release every other week or so. Enjoy!
344 Episodes
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Send a text Will's Race for Home by Jewell Parker Rhodes For as long as he can remember, Will's father has seemed dissatisfied. Will never knows what it will take to make his father, a sharecropper in Texas, happy. Until, one day he comes back from town with a notice about a land rush that will be happening in Oklahoma the following April. Right away, everything changes when the decision is made for the family to try to get some land of their own. But Will's dad acts like he isn't sure Will i...
Send a text Very Bad at Math by Hope Larson Verity, or Very, as everyone calls her, has everything going for her in 8th grade, except for Math. Even though she is the Student Council President and has tons of great ideas and plans, she can't get out from under the issue of Math and how she can try super hard, and it just doesn't seem to make sense to her! But now, if she can't figure out how to bring up her Math grade, all the things that she has worked so hard for might just be taken away fr...
Send a text Louder Than Hunger by John Schu In 8th grade, Jake finds himself lost, except for the voice in his head, that tells him things will get better if he can just make himself small enough. As in, physically small, so no one will see him and therefore, can't hurt him. He feels the only one who really sees him is his grandmother, who is becoming concerned about his weight. And when things get really bad, Jake finds himself in a treatment center, that he really doesn't want to be in. Bec...
Send a text The Enigma Girls by Candace Fleming Ever wonder just how everyone communicated during World War II? And all the secrets, spies, and information that could fall into the wrong hands? Who was out there intercepting all of that "chatter"? It turns out, in England there was a place that was dedicated to breaking the German's Enigma Machine that Germany was using to disseminate their battle plans and that place was called Bletchley Park. This "park" was the place where all the secrets ...
Send a text Click'd by Tamara Ireland Stone Allie is sure her app, called Click'd that she developed over the summer at a coding camp could actually be a contender for winning a huge competition called Games for Good. But when a classmate shows his gaming app for the same competition to their class, Allie gets worried. Is the small sample of playing the game that she did actually enough for the judges? With only a week until the big day, Allie makes a decision. Why not let it go live in her s...
Send a text Dating and Dragons by Kristy Boyce Quinn is happy to be in a new school - especially since her hold school has no good memories and unfortunately, no friends anymore. So when she gets invited to a new Dungeons and Dragons group, she is excited. And when she finds out it includes a guy named Logan, who she secretly thinks is pretty awesome, it makes everything seem better. But when Logan treats her differently once she gets into the group, she doesn't understand why. Until she lear...
Send a text Stay Dead by April Henry Milan's life feels like it spiraling out of control. She and her father were in a car accident 8 months ago, and he was killed, and she was left with a leg that was severally broken - and has pins in it. But after her father's death, her mom decided to send her off to a boarding school - because her mom took over her father's US Senate seat. Milan feels abandoned, and appears to be acting out (she isn't sure herself) because she has just gotten kicked out ...
Send a text Drawing Deena by Hena Khan It is frustrating to Deena that her mom always seems to be fighting with her dad about money. It makes her worried that they might split up, and it makes her feel like she can never ask for anything - like the art classes she would love to take. She thinks if she can come up with a plan to help her mom's business make more money then perhaps that will solve things and she won't have to worry quite so much - because it turns out, the worrying isn't good f...
Send a text The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Septys and Steve Sheinkin Jakob has a job to do for his country of Britain in their time of need. It is the beginning of World War II, and he is part of a team that is working to break the Nazis Enigma code machine. What he isn't counting on is his younger sister, Lizzie, who doesn't believe that their mother was killed in Poland at the beginning of the war. But is it possible that Lizzie could be right? Recommended for grades 7 and up. Support the show
Send a text Blood Gone Cold by Katy Grant As siblings who used to get alone, Abby can't figure out why she and Natalie seem to be on opposite ends of everything these days. So much so, that even their parents are tired of all the fighting. So when neither girl can agree on what they want to do for dinner, their parents decide to leave them at the rented cabin in the snowy woods and go to town by themselves. At first that is just fine with Abby -who decides to prank her sister by hiding her ph...
Send a text All is Fair by Dee Garretson Clara is shocked and terrified when she is called down to the headmistress of her boarding school's office and is given a telegram. After all, the year is 1918, she lives in England and her brother, Crispin has been missing in action for several months. Believing the worst, she opens the telegram, only to find a strange missive from her father, urging her to return home. Is this finally her chance to do something important for the war effort? Rec...
Send a text I Will Follow by Eireann Corrigan Shea Davison is an influencer and known on social media platforms for her dancing and honest look at her mother's depression after her divorce. Now things are feeling a bit complicated though. Turns out her best friend, Delancey's dad, and her mom found each other on a dating site and are now getting married! Which should be great, but for some reason, Delancey isn't seeming to be happy about it. What Shea doesn't know though, is that while she is...
Send a text The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri When the boy was running for his life from the Monks he had been living with, because they were trying to stone him to death, it was Samir who stopped them and it was how the boy because known as the Monkey and began to serve Samir on the silk road with other merchants traveling. However, once Monkey learns just how much of a trickster Samir is, he has other ideas about how to get away from him. But when it se...
Send a text Red in Tooth and Claw by Lish McBride Faolan is alone after her grandfather dies. And out on the frontier is no place for a teen girl, alone. Which is why her grandfather encouraged her to dress as a boy ever since she lost her parents. But even if she is pretending to be a boy, the town of New Retienne's mayor has his sights set on the land that was her grandfather's. The mayor says that Faolan can't live out there by themselves, so arranges for Faolan to be sent off to a place c...
Send a text The Girl in the Lake by India Hill Brown Celeste and her younger brother are being dropped off at their grandparents place lake house for a long summer week with their two cousins. But Celeste is worried. She doesn't know how to swim, and here she is ... at a lake house. But it turns out that shouldn't be her biggest worry. Because there is definitely a ghost haunting the house! Recommended for grades 6 and up. Support the show
Send a text The Red Palace by June Hur The year is 1758, and the place is Korea. Hyeon has accomplished her dream of becoming a palace nurse. After many years of studying, she hopes to make her father proud. A father who barely even acknowledges her existence since she is his illegitimate daughter. However, when four women are murdered, one of them a palace nurse and the others students and a teacher where Hyeon studied to become a nurse, she is devastated. Even more so, when the woman who ha...
Send a text Something Like Home by Andrea Beatriz Arango Laura is confused. She thought she was doing the right thing - but it turns out that where she has ended up is not at all where she thought she would be. Living with her aunt that she doesn't even know, is not her idea of a solution. When will she be able to go back with her parents? She doesn't want to settle in, because this new place is not home. Recommended for grades 6 and up. Support the show
Send a text Flowerheart by Catherine Bakewell Clara is devastated to learn that she will not be joining the Council because her magically powers are to volatile. She hasn't been able to control them since she got them, and she doesn't know why. To add insult to injury, her old best friend Xavier is there with the Council - as part of the Council - when she receives the bad news. Who is she if she doesn't have her magic? Recommended for grades 7 and up. Support the show
Send a text The Steps by Wendelin Van Draanen Ruby misses her best friend, Sterling. They haven't been able to communicate in anyway for a long time. And why? It isn't because they drifted apart, or had a fight, no, it is because of their Dads. Their dads are in the middle of an epic family feud and Ruby and Sterling, who are cousins, are just casualties of the fight. But one night, Sterling breaks the rules and gets in touch with Ruby. At first, Ruby thinks this might mean a change in what h...
Send a text Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim Wen and her best friend, Henry, have a plan. A plan to help get them out of their everyday lives. Because being immigrants to the country of Australia - not the easiest thing in the world. Especially when you have a father who is resentful of the fact that things didn't work out as he thought they would, as is the case with Wen, whose family has been in the country for around 10 years and in Henry's case, parents who both seem to struggle, partic...
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