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!
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Send us Fan Mail How to Tell a True Story by Tricia Springstubb Amber wakes up to an absolute nightmare when her house catches on fire. Her older brother, though, saves the day, by saving her life. Her brother, Gage, that her dad has been berating for the last year, because he isn't doing exactly what their dad thinks he should be doing becomes the local hero. But is what he did really heroic? Amber starts to wonder after she learns more about herself and her brother. Support the show
Send a text The Color of a Lie by Kim Johnson When Calvin and his parents move to a new town in Pennsylvania, he is not pleased. It meant leaving the life he had back in Chicago, but not only that, it means he can never really BE himself...because his dad plans for the family to pass, as white. The year is 1955, and Calvin and his family are limited in where they can live, work and even eat in the United States, bases solely on the color of their skin. But BECAUSE of how light their skin is, ...
Send us Fan Mail The Right Call by Tommy Greenwald Cal is a talented pitcher - so talented that he has scouts from colleges that are interested in him and that can mean a lot of pressure - pressure on him and it turns out, on his parents. Cal just wants to focus on playing the best ball he can, but soon forces outside of his control begin to spiral in ways no one could have imagined. Recommended for grades 7 and up. Support the show
Send us Fan Mail Murder Between Friends by Liz Lawson For years, Grace, Ally and Henry were all the best of friends, but that all changed when Grace thought she saw Henry's older brother in the backyard of one of their teacher's. A teacher who was later found dead. Jake, Henry's brother, went to prison, mostly because of the testimony of Grace. But when he gets out on a technicality, and might have a new trial, Grace is beginning to wonder, did she really see what she thought she saw? Is it t...
Send us Fan Mail 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 W...
Send us Fan Mail 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 aw...
Send us Fan Mail 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...
Send us Fan Mail 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 sec...
Send us Fan Mail 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 ...
Send us Fan Mail 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...
Send us Fan Mail 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...
Send us Fan Mail 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 g...
Send us Fan Mail 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 th...
Send us Fan Mail 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 h...
Send us Fan Mail 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? ...
Send us Fan Mail 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 s...
Send us Fan Mail 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 ...
Send us Fan Mail 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 pl...
Send us Fan Mail 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 us Fan Mail 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 w...
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