#IMWAYR July 4, 2022

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday weekend. I just returned from a trip to Vermont where the weather was beautiful and the fireworks were extraordinary. Being away also gave me plenty of time to read and write. I am currently working on revising a story about a girl who is starting middle school so this week I reread a couple of my starting middle school favorites to see how they handled pacing.

It's Monday What Are You Reading is hosted each week by Unleashing Readers and Teach Mentor Texts. If you are a person who loves kidlit, all you need to do to join is to blog about books you are reading on Monday, add your link to either of those two blogs, and post using the hashtag. I hope you will join in!

Now on to what I've been reading!

Middle Grade

When Shayla starts middle school, she wants everything to stay the same between herself and her two best friends. But it isn't easy to have a United Nations of friends when world events force different perspectives. When a police officer is found innocent of shooting a black man, even though there is video showing that man had his back to the officer, was unarmed, and couldn't be a threat, Shayla has to think about what it means to be a Black girl in this world. The book does an excellent job of explaining the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests that follow events like this. It is a well written story about the challenges of identity children face at this age. It was also, unfortunately, timely, because as I was reading it another of these incidents was in the news. 

Lucy would rather be working on graduate level math equations than starting middle school. After a lightning strike, her brain was wired to see math in a way that others might imagine a movie in their mind. Until this year, she has been homeschooled because her wicked smart math ability and OCD made it difficult to be understood and accepted by the other kids. But while Lucy has conquered high school math, she has yet to conquer middle school friendships so her Gran sends her "for her own good." Now she just has to survive for a year. This is one of my favorite all time books. Not only is Lucy a lovable character, there are dogs.

Young Adult

Technically this book might be adult, but it reads as a YA book to me. When Addie is forced to marry a man she doesn't love, she makes a deal with the devil for freedom. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details and Addie finds herself living a never ending life that only she will remember. In order to grant her freedom, the devil has made it so that once someone leaves Addie's presence, they forget her immediately. Until one day, one boy remembers her. Told from different points in Addie's never ending life, we see how she learns to leave her mark upon a world that would forget her face.

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Stacy Barnett Mozer is a teacher and a middle grade author. If you like what she's been reading follow her on Goodreads. Please leave a comment below.