Three spooky Middle Grade reads.
Also, Big Mouth Season Five!
Hi, friends,
I’ve been reading faster than I’ve been writing lately, so here are a few quick thoughts about some of the library books that I have GOT to return ASAP.
The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street, by Lindsay Currie
Well, it is safe to say that I’ll be reading all of Lindsay Currie’s other middle grade horror, and SOON. Because this was a blast.
It’s about incoming seventh grader Tessa, who is none too pleased to be moving from Florida to Chicago, away from the beach and the sun and her best friend. She’s unhappy about being in the stinky city, about the weather, and about the fact that her family’s new house is old and weird and creepy.
Speaking of creepy, she’s also upset that her little brother never goes anywhere without his wooden ventriloquist dummy, but that issue predates the move to Chicago.
Like India Hill Brown’s The Forgotten Girl, it ends up being a ghost story that requires our protagonist to do some historical research to figure everything out—I do love that in a ghost story. Also like The Forgotten Girl, solving the mysteries ultimately requires teamwork, empathy, patience, curiosity, and bravery.
Some of the other elements that I especially loved:
Adults! Witness! Ghost! Stuff! THIS IS SO RARE, AND I ALWAYS LOVE IT; it makes everything so much more real and so much more scary, both for the characters and the readers.
There’s a good mix of New Girl School Friendship Drama AND Ghost Business. Because as Buffy Summers taught us, regular life continues even when you’re dealing with the undead.
One of the Chicago kids that she makes friends with is significantly taller and bigger than she is, and she has a moment where she realizes that his size is affecting her expectations in re: his behavior—she’s expecting him to act more adult. She takes a beat, reminds herself that they’re the same age, and changes her attitude. I can’t remember running across that anywhere recently, and I loved it.
The Hiddenseek, by Nate Cernosek
Not too long ago, I wrote about a middle grade horror novel about hide and seek GONE WRONG:
And, wouldn’t you know it—probably you would, given the title—The Hiddenseek is centered around the same game. As in Hide and Seeker, a game of hide and seek catapults some kids into an alternate reality—in this one, the kids are stalked by a shape-shifting witch whose touch turns them to stone.
It’s geared a bit younger, and I’d argue that it’s less scary. For one thing, the danger comes entirely from paranormal forces, so it stays fantastical throughout, whereas Hide and Seeker uses realistic dangers on top of the paranormal; for another, in this one, when the kids get lost in the Hiddenseek, everyone in the regular world forgets that they ever existed, whereas in Hide and Seeker, when the kids go missing, it’s assumed that they’ve been kidnapped or some other awful thing. Obviously, your mileage may vary.
This one plays a lot with sibling dynamics, with guilt and regret, and—as so many ghost stories do—with how unprocessed grief can fester and turn toxic. It ends VERY quickly—it felt rushed to me—but, then again, sometimes that’s how it goes when you solve Paranormal Problems.
Brackenbeast, by Kate Alice Marshall
First, there was Thirteens:
And now, there is BRACKENBEAST!!
My friends, this might be my most favorite Villainous Evil Plot EVER: In Brackenbeast, the kids are up against a fae-type who is USING MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING TO CARRY OUT HER EVIL PLAN!!
Which is just brilliant.
Her company is called SixSeed, which sounds like SUCCEED, but, of course, also references Persephone and Hades and the six pomegranate seeds and HONESTLY IT’S SO PERFECT THAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW THERE ISN’T ALREADY AN MLM WITH THAT NAME.
*breathes into paper bag*
If it wasn’t already absurdly clear: I love this series.
[Quick digression: If you want a bit of a dive into the history of multi-level marketing and you haven’t listened to Season One of The Dream, you’re in for a treat.]
Brackenbeast features:
Mud beasts!
Friendship!
Emotions! (As in Thirteens, the fantasy and horror is grounded—and the overall tension is amplified—by the very-realistic emotional reactions of our main characters. Also, we ultimately get the origin story of the Brackenbeasts, and I will say that it made my throat feel a bit lump-ish.)
The return of the cat-of-ashes!
A WHOLE GORGEOUS ARC ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN REAL PEOPLE! BECOME!! FAIRY TALE ARCHETYPES!!!
Kids responding to Very Serious Evil Adults with backtalk and sass and an understanding of Villain Tropes!:
“Great. You’re evil. We get it,” Pip said. “Can you get to the part where you offer to let them go if we turn ourselves over?”
And! A farty Jack Russell terrier named Prince Caspian!! It’s a small role, but being a Jack Russell, he is a scene-stealer:
Caspian might not reliably know sit, stay, or his own name, but he knew dinner. As Jenny wandered out, he followed with the discipline of a trained soldier.
[Based on personal experience, I’d argue that he probably knows all of those words perfectly well, but just chooses to ignore everything except dinner.]
Also! I really appreciated that explicit nod to Narnia, as some of the portal stuff here is very very reminiscent of the wood between the worlds in the Narnia books.
Annnnnd now I am going to go and cry, as I have to wait until (I assume) sometime next year for the new one, auuuugh.
Watching: Big Mouth, Season Five.
As I mentioned last week, I’ve gone all-in on Pikmin Bloom, so I’ve been spending the vast majority of my downtime walking all over the place and planting digital flowers for my digital flower friends. If my usual pattern bears out, I’ll stick with it for a few weeks and then get distracted by the next shiny thing, but for now, I’m having a lot of fun with it. And walking a whole lot more than usual, which is a nice bonus.
ANYWAY, we did blow through the entirety of the new season of Big Mouth when it dropped on Netflix, and good lord, I did not think there was a way to ramp that show up into even weirder and raunchier territory, but here we are—and really, what is weirder and raunchier than puberty and growing up, right?
The introduction of the lovebugs—who morph into hate worms when Feelings Get Hurt—was so smart, and I never in a million years would have guessed that I’d be so emotionally invested in Jay and Lola, of all characters. (Not as a couple, necessarily, but as characters.)
What really kills me about the show in general, I think, is that it’s extremely raunchy and sweary on the surface, but it’s also extremely honest about how messy growing up is, and how messy and complicated emotions and relationships are. It’s got an undercurrent of earnestness that isn’t undercut by all the jokes.
The writers and performers don’t hide all the feelings behind ironic detachment, and I really appreciate that. As much as I run away screaming from engaging with my own feelings, I do think the world would be a better place if we worked more at considering the complexity of emotion; if we thought more about what was going on behind our respective masks, and what’s actually going on in each others’ heads and hearts.
Talk to you soon,
Leila