age range: 9-12
genre: lightly spooky sci-fi
Summer Rachel Short’s website

Packed to the gills with fun.
— Kirkus Reviews

A fun debut novel with an action-packed climax that will leave readers eager to scope out the weirder side of nature.
— School Library Journal

Please tell us about your book.

The Mutant Mushroom Takeover is a lightly spooky novel about eleven-year-old aspiring naturalist, Magnolia Stone, and her best friend Nate, a conspiracy theorist and wannabe YouTube star. The story takes place in the small town of Shady Pines, Texas and kicks off when Maggie and Nate discover a strange bioluminescent fungus growing in the woods outside of town. At first the mushrooms seem like a natural wonder, but after animals around town start sprouting unusual growths and Maggie’s brother develops a bluish glow and hacking cough, Maggie and Nate wonder what they’ve really stumbled onto. 

As things in Shady Pines become stranger and more dangerous, Maggie must use her scientific smarts and Nate’s impressive knowledge of all things paranormal to put things back in order and prevent these peculiar glowing mushrooms from taking over their home.

What inspired you to write this story?

A couple happenings got me started––one was an idea my son had for a pirate named Root Beard whose beard was made of living tree roots. I started imagining what a character who was part human, part something else might be like which eventually inspired the creation of an important character in the book. The other was an old documentary my kids and I watched called Fungi: The Rotten World About Us. It had all sorts of creepy, fascinating facts about fungi and was a starting point for more research and imagining.

Could you share with readers how you conducted your research or share a few interesting tidbits you learned while researching? 

I watched videos, checked out library books, and read lots of articles about the unique properties of fungus—there are many! Though it is all around us, it’s a life form most people don’t know much about. The more I read, the more intrigued I became by what I was learning. To illustrate, here are few fun facts about fungus:

• The largest living organism in the world is a fungus located in Malheur National Forest, Oregon and is nicknamed the Humongous Fungus. It spreads over 2,385 acres and is estimated to weigh between 7,567 and 35,000 tons!
• Bioluminescent fungi produce their own light and glow neon green, blue, or yellow. They can be found in forests around the world. The phenomenon is also known as Foxfire. 
• Fungi help trees communicate with one another through a vast underground fungal network. Through the fungus, trees warn each other about diseases and droughts and even direct their roots toward better soil. The network is nicknamed the wood-wide-web.
• Radiation-loving mushrooms have been used to clean up nuclear disasters in places like Fukushima, Japan. The mushrooms feast on the radiation, thereby absorbing some of the harmful effects of the radiation. 

What are some special challenges associated with mixing real science with fiction?

There are so many fascinating and bizarre happenings in nature but unless we do some digging we don’t always find out about them. In The Mutant Mushroom Takeover, I really wanted to share my own wonder and excitement about all the strange things right under our noses. I know science topics can seem intimidating so my goal was to make this story as accessible as possible. I think one thing that helped with that was the differing interests of my two main characters. Maggie is very into all things sciency, while her best friend Nate wants to discover aliens or Bigfoot and be a big-time YouTube star. They each have their own perspective about the things they bump into––kind of like a middle grade X-Files where one character is sure everything is a paranormal encounter and the other is convinced there’s a scientific explanation. That dynamic brought a lot of humor to the story which helps make the science more relatable and fun. 

What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?  

I think The Mutant Mushroom Takeover can inspire kids to find out more about the amazing and often bizarre natural world around them. There are real-life creatures that are as creepy and fascinating as any monster or alien from TV. I hope that after kids finish reading my book, they’ll have an appetite to discover more about nature’s many mysteries. Maybe some will even take up investigations of their own like Maggie and Nate. 

*** SALE! ***

Ride On, Will Cody! is currently $7.03 on Amazon. That’s 59% off the cover price.

This post contains affiliate links. More details here.

age range: 8-12
genre: contemporary fiction
themes: grief, loss, healing
Cindy Baldwin’s website
Beginners Welcome book trailer

Targeted to kids who sometimes feel invisible or afraid, Baldwin’s prose challenges them to be the bravest and wisest versions of themselves, delivering the message that it is our brokenness that makes us beautiful, not our perfection. 
— School Library Journal (starred review)

Genuine and hopeful, Annie Lee’s story is one of finding courage in tough circumstances, of love and vulnerability, and of the power of music, despite one’s imperfections.
— Booklist

Intermingling themes of grief and loss with moments of unexpected, joyful connection, Baldwin depicts character growth with particular grace.
— Publishers Weekly

Please tell us about your book.

Beginners Welcome is the story of eleven-year-old Annie Lee, who’s starting school a few months after her beloved daddy unexpectedly died and her two best friends drifted away. Annie Lee is determined to stay invisible this year, because invisible people can’t be hurt—but when she meets Mitch, a tough skater girl who may need a friend as much as Annie Lee does, and Ray, an elderly pianist at a local mall whose music creates magic only Annie Lee can see, she starts to wonder if maybe opening herself up to love really is worth it, after all.

What inspired you to write this story?

There were a couple of threads that came together to form this book. The first was one day when my husband had forgotten to rinse the shaving cream out of the bathroom sink after he shaved. The whole bathroom smelled like his shaving cream, and I suddenly started wondering what it would be like if somebody you loved died, but the visceral reminders of their presence—the scents, the sounds, the things that make you know they’re near—stuck around.

I also had this striking image of an old man playing the piano and creating magical lights above it, set in a mall I used to visit in my hometown, which is housed in two old tobacco warehouses and so has a really unique feel.

And finally, I wanted to explore the tension between experiencing loss and deciding to connect with others, even knowing that it makes you vulnerable. Although I didn’t lose a parent like Annie Lee, I was a young teenager when I learned that my disease, cystic fibrosis, was fatal. At the time, it carried a life expectancy of 34 years. I spent much of my teen years wrestling with the question of how a person can fully invest themselves in life, knowing that it will probably end early. Although Annie Lee’s situation is different, it gave me a chance to delve into that dynamic, which I think is a real hallmark of the human condition.

Could you share with readers how you conducted your research or share a few interesting tidbits you learned while researching?

Beginners Welcome is the only book I’ve ever written (so far) that’s set in a real town—my hometown of Durham, North Carolina. Because it’s a real place, I wanted to get details as accurate and realistic as I could. Although I grew up there, I haven’t lived there in many years, and so I spent a LOT of time on Google Maps! I plotted distances from one location to another, looked at lots of satellite pictures, and even spent a long time “driving” through Google Street View on all the routes Annie Lee takes on her scooter, so that I could accurately describe what she sees as she scooters and how it changes from one area to the next. It was such a bittersweet, nostalgic experience to spend all that time “driving” the streets I used to travel all the time as a kid and teen, but now only get to visit once a year or so in non-pandemic times. It made me very grateful for the incredible tools that writers have at their fingertips these days!

What are some special challenges associated with writing middle grade fiction about heavy topics?

Both my debut novel, Where the Watermelons Grow, and Beginners Welcome focus on kids who are going through extraordinarily difficult experiences—in Watermelons, it’s a parent’s schizophrenia, and in Beginners it’s the loss of a father. As a writer, I find myself drawn toward stories like this a lot, because I spent my tween and teen years wrestling with problems that felt very adult and very different from those of my friends. Tween me felt so isolated and alone in her experiences, and whenever I sit down, I think about all the eleven-year-olds out there who feel equally isolated in their lives and need a reminder that they’re not the only one going through something big and tough.

However, that kind of writing definitely takes a toll! Especially with Beginners Welcome, because it was my second published book and second books are hard, I really struggled with the emotional heaviness of the topic as I wrote. I had to focus a lot on the initial ideas that had sparked the book and the excitement I’d felt to write it. I also worked hard on giving Annie Lee some lighthearted side plot lines, like the egg drop experiment she and Mitch are working on for science class, to help the book avoid getting bogged down in sadness.

What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?

Besides the always-needed issues of loss, grief, and healing, Beginners Welcome is very connected to school! One of the main subplots concerns Annie Lee’s science class, and how she and Mitch are discovering the scientific method through an egg drop project. I’ve always felt like it would be so cool to see students read the book and try their own egg drop contraptions as well!

This post contains affiliate links.

genre: biographical novel-in-verse
age range: 8 and up
Jeannine’s website

Thoroughly researched, creatively presented, inspiring real-life role models for girls who love math.
— Kirkus Reviews

Written in free verse, the text is welcoming, informative, pithy, wry, very readable, and occasionally haunting. . . A heartening celebration of mathematically gifted women. 
— Booklist

Please tell us about your book.

Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math uses verse to introduce readers to seven women who used math in their work studying stars, mapping the ocean, making charts to show the need for social change, or planning space flights.

What inspired you to write this story?

As I researched Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science, math kept coming up as a vehicle for understanding, especially in today’s world. The three women profiled in Finding Wonders lived in the 1700s or 1800s, before science shifted from enjoying and understanding nature to learning about underlying patterns. I read articles that contemporary scientists wrote about girls who dream of jobs such as working with animals or improving the environment, then find that a lack of a strong math background holds them back when they reach college. I wanted to show readers age eight and up some of the joy in math to help them approach the subject with more confidence and perhaps delight. Plus women such as Caroline Herschel, Florence Nightingale, Katherine Johnson, and Vera Rubin are amazing!

Could you share with readers how you conducted your research?

Writing about women who love math – or “love” for the most part (we all can get frustrated with what we treasure) was a leap for me. Math was never my favorite subject, since I like detail more than abstraction. Grasping Mysteries isn’t a math book, but based in people, so I did my best to understand basic concepts, then present them in the context of lives which were marked by some people getting in the women’s way while others encouraged them.

What are some special challenges associated with fictionalizing a true story?

In a verse history such as Grasping Mysteries, I honor the facts that are given about someone and use the chronology of their lives as a frame. The fictionalizing comes in through developing scenes that are documented, but not the exact circumstances. I pull on details based on general recollections and invent dialogue using what’s chronicled about peoples’ characters. I lean a lot on setting, going past the biographical sketches to read about and study pictures connected to the time and place where someone lived. I worked against the prejudice some have that math is boring, emphasizing the joy that accomplishment brought.

What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?

I love the idea of math teachers and English teachers working together. My hope is that those who love math and those who may be made anxious by math can get together and enjoy stories where math is part of the plot – but there’s plenty of other sorts of drama for those who just want to read about inspiring girls! I hope that includes boys. Everyone can relate to what it’s like to have a dream and deal with those who might stand in one’s way.