Category: middle grade

Mascot
by Charles Waters (Author) and Traci Sorell (Author)
@ Amazon | Bookshop

Booktalk: In Rye, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC, people work hard, kids go to school, and football is big on Friday nights. An eighth-grade English teacher creates an assignment for her class to debate whether Rye’s mascot should stay or change. Now six middle schoolers–all with different backgrounds and beliefs–get involved in the contentious issue that already has the suburb turned upside down with everyone choosing sides and arguments getting ugly.

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Copyright © 2023 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

The Do More Club
by Dana Kramaroff (Author)
@ Amazon | Bookshop

Booktalk: Ever since twelve-year-old Josh Kline found an antisemitic note in his family’s mailbox in third grade, he has felt uncomfortable about his Jewish identity. At a new school where he’s pretty sure he’s the only Jew, he’s hoping to just keep religion out of everything . . . until the morning someone sprays swastikas all over the building. That’s when everything changes.

In one of the school counseling groups set up in response to the attack, Josh finally reveals that he is Jewish, and quickly finds out there’s more to the other kids in his grade too: All of them have their own struggles. Maybe Josh can do something to help–to “repair the world” as his rabbi teaches, by starting a Do More club to spread kindness. But making a difference is never simple, even when you have new friends by your side.

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Copyright © 2023 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.