Cindy:
Cinder (Feiwel, 2012), the first book in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series. This futuristic Cinderella story is a mix of fairy tale, sci-fi, and romance — perfect for a wide female readership and certain to spark discussion and anticipation of future installments. Watch your back, Hunger Games, this series could be the next big thing. My second choice for mothers and daughters to read together would be Kekla Magoon’s 37 Things I Love (in no particular order) (Holt, 2012) for its honest first-person portrayal of a teenage girl’s coming of age as she deals with death, hope, love, and friendship.

Elissa:
Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart by Candace Fleming (Random/Schwartz and Wade, 2011). It’s suspenseful, informative, and accessible; readers will come away with a fresh view of the feisty, pioneering woman and the events leading up to — and following — her disappearance.

Kitty:
Libba Bray’s hilarious and sharply observant Beauty Queens (Scholastic, 2011). A planeload of beauty pageant contestants crashes on what looks like a deserted island. The scope of the plot is mind-boggling — the girls are ultimately pawns in a massive global conspiracy — but the quieter message about the power unleashed when teen girls think society isn’t watching will resonate across generations. Bray’s narration of the audiobook edition is a tour-de-force performance.

Katrina:
The mature topics in Girl in the Mirror (Persea, 2013) by Meg Kearney will appeal to older teens (and give mothers a jumping-off point for discussion), but it’s as much about mother-daughter bonds and connection to family — both adopted and birth in this case. Ideal for girls with adopted, single-parent, or other unconventional family backgrounds. Its verse narrative will likely be a new and exciting format for teens and moms to explore together.

Katie:
The women in Wren’s family manifest magical powers when they reach puberty. Wren uses hers to bring her boyfriend Danny back from the dead, but then meets (living) Gabriel, who’s drawn to her gift. Although romance takes center stage in Amy Garvey’s Cold Kiss (HarperTeen, 2011), Garvey weaves female familial relationships as intricately as Wren creates her spell. The complex dynamics between three generations of magical women (think a YA Practical Magic) add depth — and plenty for teen girls and their moms to discuss.

Martha:
How about A. S. King’s Ask the Passengers (Little, Brown, 2012)? Protagonist Astrid is taking a class in the Socratic method at her close-minded, small-town high school, and so she spends the year “asking questions and not rushing to answer them” — an illuminating time for her, and an ideal springboard for book discussion. Is she gay? Or just in love with one particular girl? Once she determines her identity, should she hide it, like her best friend? Astrid makes some pretty crucial choices in the book, and readers will be right there to see why, and how; through the interspersed airplane interludes (Astrid spends a lot of time looking up at the sky and sending questions and love to the passengers on airplanes) readers get glimpses into other lives, just as full of struggle and conflict and not-easy answers as Astrid’s life is. Finally, seeing as this is a mother/teen daughter read-together, Astrid’s relationship with her (nightmare of a) mother would certainly provoke discussion…

Roger:
I think Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity (Hyperion, 2012) would be an excellent choice; it’s the kind of YA book that makes a great adult crossover. While the story — a WWII thriller about two young women — is plenty exciting on its own, the narrative structure is tricky and would be fun to talk about.

Shara:
Pearl (called Bean) and her best friend Henry are comfortable with their respective familial dysfunctional in Pearl (Holt, 2011) by Jo Knowles, but the revelation of long-kept family secrets exposes the corrosive effect that silence can have on relationships. Homosexuality, friendship, and romance are just a few of the topics tackled by this dramatic novel.

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Developer Nosy Crow utilizes a choose-your-own-adventure narrative structure, which has recently become a trend in children’s digital applications, to encourage interactivity and nonlinear story exploration. As Red sets out to deliver a basket of goodies to Grandma, she encounters a hungry wolf and several forks in the road along the way. A combination of three paths (out of eight total) leads to the final destination, each path featuring a mini activity that Red must complete in order to obtain items that she will ultimately use to battle the Big Bad Wolf in the denouement at Grandma’s house. Each time you play, you can try a different combination of paths and activities, thus changing the final outcome. An easily navigable map in the upper right corner allows you to backtrack and try different paths if you don’t like the way things are going.

Mini activities include simple tasks such as picking flowers, collecting jars of water, and pouring honey, to name a few. Each activity employs an interactive element: tilting the device from side to side, blowing into the microphone, and dragging items here and there using the touch screen technology.

No matter which paths you take, the story concludes with a no-holds-barred, girl vs. canine showdown that ends with the inevitable butt-kicking of the maniacal Big Bad Wolf, wherein he gets his just deserts through a variety of humorously humiliating defeat sequences, while the victors, Red and Grandma, just get desserts — the only things devoured in this version of Little Red are the treats from the picnic basket.

Available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; $4.99. Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

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Perhaps no children’s book has been more subject to the corrosive influence of commerce than Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Its tangled publishing history features professional bullies more ruthless than Mr. McGregor (whose wife put Peter’s father in a pie) pursuing this hapless rabbit across time, committing acts of piracy, “copyfraud,” and criminally bad taste. Potter’s longtime publisher, Frederick Warne & Co., has joined their ranks, baking Peter into an unseemly sequel, The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit (about which more later).

The bunnysploitation seems especially glaring in light of Potter’s unique gifts as writer and illustrator. Born in London in 1866, Potter was an assiduous student of animal anatomy and behavior from childhood on. She and her younger brother Bertram furnished their nursery with exotic pets, wild and domestic, bringing home mice, lizards, bats, frogs, birds, and, of course, rabbits. The children became determined amateur naturalists, documenting their finds in sketchbooks, never squeamish about studying dead specimens. (Indeed, when their captives succumbed, sometimes to rather outré diets, the young Potters would boil the skeletons and draw them as well.)

Beatrix carried her affections into adulthood: Potter scholar Judy Taylor once compiled a list of the author’s named pets throughout her life, tallying eighty-nine. Among them was the rabbit Benjamin Bouncer, who perished after breaking a tooth on hard candy. But he and his successor, the beloved Peter, lived long lives, providing ample opportunities to study their attitudes and habits.

With this intimate familiarity, Beatrix Potter became one of the finest observers of rabbits since Dürer. And not just rabbits: clothed or not, the mice, pigs, red squirrels, rabbits, hedgehogs, cats, foxes, and owls of her books are all true to life, animated by a keen eye for muscular and skeletal structure as well as by the common postures and characteristic movements she captured. Animals in her tales do fantastical things — mice embroider buttonholes; newt Sir Isaac Newton, clad in a species-specific “black and gold waistcoat,” dines on “grasshopper with lady-bird sauce” — but they do them plausibly. They are charming and convincing in large part because they are rendered naturalistically. This can be seen in all of her tales but also in a pen-and-ink drawing, the meditative masterwork “The Rabbit’s Dream” (c. 1899). A sleeping rabbit conjures itself under a counterpane in bed, surrounded by portraits of itself in over a dozen different positions — stretched on its side, prone with legs kicked back, with feet tucked under the body, with ears erect, ears folded back, ears parted over the shoulders, etc. A virtuosic performance, it remains among the most moving of Potter’s works, a testament to imagination enriched by experience.

Potter first told the story of Peter Rabbit in 1893 in a picture-letter sent to the bedridden son of her former governess. Its simple line drawings introduce the principals — Peter and his siblings; his mother; and his nemesis, Mr. McGregor — while its tiny tale of temptation and trial in an English garden unfolds in simple perfection. Several years later, she borrowed the letter back, expanded it, and, after failing to interest publishers in producing a small, affordable book with a single color frontispiece and black-and-white illustrations (she felt color throughout was too expensive), printed it herself; it was snapped up by friends and relations. She quickly secured a contract with publisher Frederick Warne, agreeing to redo the illustrations in color.

The book proved an immediate success on publication in October 1902, rapidly selling out a first printing of eight thousand copies. “The public must be fond of rabbits!” Potter wrote to the youngest Warne brother, Norman (to whom she would be briefly engaged, before his untimely death in 1905); “what an appalling quantity of Peter.” To her dismay, the firm failed to register copyright in the United States, leading to piracies and loss of revenue. Although she helped save the company in 1917, after embezzlement by another Warne brother nearly bankrupted it, she scolded them on quality, condemning a copy of Peter Rabbit’s Almanac for 1929 as “wretched.” She wrote sharply, “It is impossible to explain balance & style to people, if they don’t see it themselves.” While she enthusiastically crafted her own unique merchandise prototypes — including an extraordinarily soulful Peter Rabbit doll — she could have had no idea of the extent of commodification to come.

After Potter died in 1943 at the age of seventy-seven, Warne cast itself as the guardian of her legacy. But eventually the guardian began behaving badly, seeking to wring profits from its most famous long-eared property. In 1983, Warne was acquired by Penguin, itself owned by the international conglomerate Pearson, the largest book publisher in the world. Then, as scholar Margaret Mackey chronicles in The Case of Peter Rabbit: Changing Conditions of Literature for Children, Warne embarked on the expensive process of remaking printing plates for Potter’s books. While the new reproductions were a welcome improvement, Warne festooned them with what Mackey terms “aggressive” assertions of copyright, although Peter was already in the public domain. (In the UK, copyright protection lapsed but was then extended until 2013 when the European Union “harmonized” copyright law.) Warne seized on its “re-originated” illustrations to declare itself “owner of all rights, copyrights and trademarks in the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations,” going so far as to attach a “tm” to the scampering Peter on the cover. Back in 1979, the publisher had sued a competitor, claiming trademark rights to eight images from Potter’s books that, it argued, were identified in the public mind with Warne alone. The case was settled out of court, but Viva R. Moffat, a legal scholar who teaches at the University of Denver, has called Warne’s claims (in a paper on “Mutant Copyrights”) a “stretch.”

Warne has applied for trademarks here and in the EU for every imaginable Peter Rabbit–related item that might feasibly be sold, from “books and texts in all media” to “toilet seat covers” and “meat extracts.” Moffat assails the practice of forcing trademarks to pinch-hit for lapsed copyright, while another legal expert, Jason Mazzone (who teaches intellectual property law at Brooklyn Law School), defines the placement of misleading warnings on public domain works as “copyfraud” in his book by the same name.

Warne’s zealous pursuit of its rights has not deterred it from crass acts of its own. In 1987, the same year it published its painstakingly remade edition, the firm allowed Ladybird Books, a purveyor of cheap paperbacks owned by the parent company, Pearson, to market The Tale of Peter Rabbit with bowdlerized text, eliminating Potter’s dry wit, dispensing with the pie made of Peter’s father (Mrs. Rabbit instead explains that Mr. McGregor just “doesn’t like rabbits”), and replacing Potter’s illustrations with photos of stuffed animals. Warne was excoriated in The Times of London, which condemned the new edition as “Hamlet without the ghost, Othello without the handkerchief.” Undaunted, a few years later Warne took out an advertisement in The Bookseller — “Peter Rabbit™ Packs a Powerful Punch” — threatening those who wandered into its garden with “expensive legal action” (see below).

The text of Warne’s advertisement asserting its legal rights to Peter Rabbit.

Now the firm has set its hobnailed boot upon Peter again, muddying the same waters it sought to protect:  publishing The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit, a large-format sequel written by actress-celebrity Emma Thompson and illustrated by Eleanor Taylor, whose previous books include Go-Go Gorillas. The idea did not originate with Thompson. According to her, Warne solicited the sequel, sending her two half-eaten radishes and a note purportedly written by the Rabbit Himself. The story finds Peter once again in Mr. McGregor’s lettuce patch (ground already covered in Potter’s own sequel, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny), climbing into a picnic basket, and being carried off to Scotland, where frenetic adventures involving a giant black rabbit named Finlay McBurney ensue. Smarmy in tone, the text relies heavily on italics and typographical tricks to engender interest. Its author clearly knows little about rabbits, suggesting that Finlay’s mother goes about with her ears “tied in a neat knot.” (One hopes an impressionable toddler will not do the same to a pet.) Saddled with a thankless task, artist Taylor produces soft-focus brushwork that seems timid and amateurish, lacking Potter’s precision and authority, her unerring color sense, and her humor. Taylor’s Mrs. McGregor is copied from Potter’s privately printed original and is more appropriation than homage, while poor Finlay’s chest juts above his kilt like a pouter pigeon’s. Missing are Potter’s beautifully detailed portraits of flora and fauna, from the water beetle in The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher to the Red Admiral butterfly in The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse. No one, it seems, has done more to dilute Potter’s work than her own publisher.

Other ersatz sequels have proliferated recently, as publishing houses cash in on classics, from The Wind in the Willows to Winnie-the-Pooh to A Little Princess to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Indeed, there will be sequels to The Further Tale: Thompson has signed up for two more. Ultimately, such derivative stuff can’t harm the originals, just as a bad production of Shakespeare can’t touch the play itself. But sequels, it seems to me, are particularly confusing to the youngest readers, who are just developing notions of authorship. As the editor of the Library of America’s edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, I’ve been asked by children where the recent sequels, written by an heir who never met Wilder, came from. From someplace hotter than the Dakotas, I think.

What sets The Further Tale apart is that it presents inferior work to an audience of very young children who have not yet developed the intellectual capacity to distinguish between original and unoriginal text and art. In her discussion of the multiplicity of Peters, scholar Mackey quotes Margaret Meek’s essay on the profound influence of early encounters: “Children’s literature is undeniably the first literary experience, where the reader’s experiences of what literature is are laid down. Books in childhood initiate children into literature; they inaugurate certain kinds of literary competencies.” The competency that The Further Tale inaugurates is that of copying. It tells children, It’s acceptable to be unoriginal. It’s acceptable to exploit the work of others. And it’s acceptable — even desirable — to make money from that exploitation. This is being done in an era when publishing has been beset with scandals involving plagiarism and other unethical practices, the perpetrators of which are often young. With the model set by today’s publishers, this is hardly surprising. Perhaps Warne could learn a lesson from the original Peter: gluttony always leads to tears.

From the May/June 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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Get outside
Peep and Ducky by David Martin, illus. by David Walker, Candlewick, 1–4 years.
Phoebe and Digger by Tricia Springstubb, Candlewick, 3–6 years.
Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle by Chris Raschka, Schwartz & Wade/Random, 3–6 years.
It’s Our Garden by George Ancona, Candlewick, 5–8 years.

Get moving
Becoming Babe Ruth by Matt Tavares, Candlewick, 4–7 years.
You Never Heard of Willie Mays?! by Jonah Winter,  Schwartz & Wade/Random, 4–7 years.
Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball by John Coy, illus. by Joe Morse, Carolrhoda, 4–7 years.
Daredevil: The Daring Life of Betty Skelton by Meghan McCarthy, Wiseman/Simon, 4–7 years.

Historical fiction starring girls
Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes, Little, Brown, 8–12 years.
Bo at Ballard Creek by Kirkpatrick Hill, illus. by LeUyen Pham, Holt, 8–12 years.
Hattie Ever After by Kirby Larson, Delacorte, 10–14 years.
One Came Home by Amy Timberlake, Knopf, 10–14 years.

Teen audiobooks
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, read by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell, Bolinda/Brilliance, 14–17 years.
Eve & Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate, read by Jenna Lamia and Holter Graham, Macmillan Audio, 14–17 years.
Pandemonium [Delirium trilogy] by Lauren Oliver, read by Sarah Drew, Listening Library, 14–17 years.
A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix, read by Michael Goldstrom, Listening Library, 14–17 years.

These titles were featured in the May 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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Water in the Park: A Book About Water & 
the Times of the Day

For more on Water in the Park, read “Five questions for Emily Jenkins.”

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• Tiny, bad-tempered gnomes are ubiquitous in the illustrations and animations, but never mentioned in the text until they eat Hansel’s breadcrumb trail.
• After the children’s wicked stepmother takes them deep into the forest, she gets lost there herself and is never seen again — although her complaining can still be heard.
• Hansel shoots the witch with his slingshot, pitching her forward into her own cauldron, which propels her up the chimney and out of the house.
• A garden full of modern-day sweets (e.g., fizzy lemonade, gummies, and cotton candy) surrounds the witch’s house. The enchanted gummy animals are returned to their true forms after the witch’s defeat. A formerly-gummy swan offers to fly the children home.
• Hansel, much heavier after his ordeal, is magically restored to his previous skinny state.

The richly colored illustrations are pleasantly reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons and well suited to the story’s light tone. An impressive amount of animation is seamlessly integrated into the illustrations, humorously extending the story.

The main menu offers three options for experiencing the app. “Read to me” mode plays the narration without displaying the text. Interactivities on each screen are disabled while the narration plays; tapping a “sparkle” icon in the upper right-hand corner interrupts the narrator and skips straight to allowing users to access the interactive elements. In “read by myself” mode, the narration is off, and the text displays on a scrolling pane across the bottom of the screen. “Play around” mode forgoes the story entirely so that users may explore Hansel and Gretel’s world.

The navigation is well-designed and simple, with self-explanatory icons and a thumbnail chapter that’s accessible from any screen. The cheerful music and sound effects have separate on/off controls. English and Dutch language options are provided.

A caveat: as the Kirkus review points out, the characters of Gretel and the children’s father are “largely relegate[d] . . . to passive roles.” In the father’s case this passivity minimizes his complicity in the wicked stepmother’s machinations, rendering him innocent. In Gretel’s case, however, it makes her a mere tag-along to the story’s star, “clever” Hansel. (And another thing — we’re repeatedly told Hansel is clever, but his behavior isn’t consistent with this characterization.) Most of the app’s changes to the plot are innocuous, if unnecessary, but one change I find troubling is the revised denouement. Instead of Gretel saving the day by pushing the witch into her own oven, here Hansel defeats the witch alone. This version is more Hansel’s story than that of Hansel and Gretel.

More Epic Tales fairy tales narrated by Silvertongue are on the way.

Available for iPad and iPhone (requires iOS 5.1 or later); $3.99. Rated age 9 and up.

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Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity was among the best of last year’s young adult fiction, and this audio version does it justice. Here is the intimate story of two young women — unlikely best friends — in WWII: one is a British spy in a Nazi prison; the other is a pilot. One has a chance; the other is doomed. But which is which? Wein’s intricately plotted thriller receives a fine audio treatment, one that heightens the book’s considerable emotion and suspense. The contrast between the refined aristocratic accents of one of the women and the working-class accents of the other, through the use of two different narrators, Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell, helps listeners follow the book’s intricate (but ultimately oh-so-rewarding) plot. (Bolinda Audio/Brilliance Audio, 14–17 years)

In another thriller, Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate’s futuristic sci-fi Eve & Adam, two genetically modified teens come together to fight the growing amorality of the biotech firm their parents founded years ago. Chapters alternate between the perspectives of Evening, daughter of the powerful and feared mogul Terra Spiker, and Solo, an orphan living at Spiker Biotech. Narrators Jenna Lamia and Holter Graham respectively read these parts, with Graham also taking on the role of Adam, Eve’s “perfect man,” whom she creates believing that her genetic engineering is only a computer simulation. The narrators handle all the intrigue, action, and philosophical issues raised as the teens take on the evil scientists and reshape a love triangle into a square. (Macmillan Audio, 14–17 years)

Sarah Drew excels in her narration of Pandemonium, the second book in Lauren Oliver’s dystopian trilogy, set in a society where love is a (surgically) preventable disease and those infected are exiled, imprisoned, or worse. Pandemonium opens where the first book, Delirium, left off, in the days immediately following Lena’s escape into the Wilds; the narrative then shifts back and forth between this early period and a present-day that sees her joining the Resistance in New York. Spoken chapter headers differentiate each shift in time and help immensely with listeners’ comprehension. Lena’s narrative crackles with passion and urgency, perfectly befitting a protagonist who realizes early on that if she wants to be a lover, she’ll have to be a fighter, too. (Listening Library, 14–17 years)

Garth Nix’s sci-fi coming-of-age adventure A Confusion of Princes balances highly inventive world-building with a true understanding of the adolescent male mindset. Khemri, raised as a Prince of the Empire, has a rude awakening when he realizes that in order to become Emperor he must enter a brutal and perilous contest with a host of other equally overconfident and entitled Princes. Then he realizes that if he wins the contest, he must sacrifice his humanity. Narrator Michael Goldstrom imbues Khemri with just the right combination of hubris, heart, and naiveté as he survives the treacherous attacks of other Princes, fights off pirates, engages in space battles, falls in love, and ultimately outwits the Empire. Cinematic, action-packed, and quite profound, A Confusion of Princes is a movie waiting to happen, but until then, this well-produced audio version will keep listeners engaged until the final, surprising twist. (Listening Library, 14–17 years)

From the May 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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Is there a bigger baseball fan in the children’s book world than Matt Tavares? His sixth title on the sport, Becoming Babe Ruth, shines a light on George Herman “Babe” Ruth’s charitable side. At the turn of the twentieth century, young George’s delinquent ways land him at Saint Mary’s, a local industrial boarding school. There he meets Brother Matthias, whose majestic home runs in the schoolyard enthrall the boy. Years later when a fire destroys the school, Ruth shows that he hasn’t forgotten his roots. Tavares’s mixed-media illustrations expertly convey the Babe’s charm. (Candlewick, 4–7 years)

In 1936, two baseball players had something to prove. Was twenty-one-year-old Joe DiMaggio ready for the Major Leagues? Should Satchel Paige, pitching great in the Negro Leagues, be playing in the Majors? Something to Prove: The Great Satchel Paige vs. Rookie Joe DiMaggio by Robert Skead explores the game, between the Dick Bartell’s All Stars and the Satchel Paige All-Stars teams, that tested the men’s mettle. Skead portrays the larger issue of race and justice in America while superbly developing the game’s tension inning by inning. Floyd Cooper’s brown-toned illustrations nicely evoke the dreamy reminiscences of baseball legend. (Carolrhoda, 4–7 years)

Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball by John Coy begins with one James Naismith taking over an unruly gym class. He needs a game where “accuracy was more valuable than force,” and so basketball was concocted. Coy’s spare, precise language reflects the sport’s welcome order as well as its athletic appeal. Joe Morse’s kinetic paintings, at once dynamic and controlled, capture basketball’s combination of power and finesse. (Carolrhoda, 4–7 years)

In the 1930s, when airplanes were still new, young Betty Skelton played with toy planes when other girls played with dolls. Daredevil: The Daring Life of Betty Skelton details the life of the “First Lady of Firsts.” She was a record-breaking aerobatic pilot and auto racer; the first female boat jumper; and she even trained with the Mercury 7 astronauts. Author-illustrator Meghan McCarthy’s signature pictures, featuring bug-eyed characters and a vivid palette, accompany her soaring tale of a little girl with big dreams. (Wiseman/Simon, 4–7 years)

From the May 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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It was noticed — my imagination — and praised until I was nine or so, when my mother started rebuking me for having too much of it. Perhaps I’d provoked her, paradoxically, by wandering in my chatter too close to truths that needed to stay secret. Whatever her reason, this was a blow to me — an attack on my best protection, and my joy.

I could have given up right then and withered away, and might have if it hadn’t been for books. Whatever else my family’s faults, they read. My mother took me each week to the library, where I was encouraged to wander freely through the children’s room, choosing whatever pleased me. On one wall were picture books for little kids; on the other walls, the books with chapters — “real” books, to my mind, or what we now call middle grade books. I flew through those middle grade books, six or more a week, finding solace and hope.

Consider one of my favorite series, Mary Norton’s Borrower books, about people so tiny they could live under the floor, surviving on the gleanings of humans. Stacked matchboxes became a chest of drawers, a hatpin a weapon against threatening bugs, a potato enough food for weeks. What vast imaginations the Borrowers needed, to see a cutlery box as a possible boat, or a boot as a home. And even better — I understood this early on — what a vast imagination Mary Norton had needed to create the Borrowers. Or E. Nesbit the Psammead, Noel Streatfeild the Fossil sisters, C. S. Lewis the wardrobe, Norton Juster the tollbooth — the list was long and laden with riches.

My decision was made. Since splendid imaginings were too much for the real world, I threw in my lot with the authors and their creations, and stayed there until I grew up and no longer needed the shelter. By then, however, living without books had become impossible — the act of reading was as natural and essential to me as eating or sleeping. And so I read and read, and eventually I wrote a middle grade book of my own, but that is another story.

Not all children are treated as badly as I was, and for that we can be grateful. But all children have to work out the role of creativity, fantasy, and learning in their lives, often at the same age I was when books saved me — nine to twelve, the years for reading middle grade books. This is when children are moving toward an identity apart from their families but haven’t yet submerged themselves in peer groups. For these brief and wondrous years, they are individuals open to and ripe for the very best we can give them, including those books written just for them, books that invite them into the world outside their families, their schoolrooms, their own lives.

The list of middle grade books available these days is immeasurably longer and richer than when I was a child fifty years ago. Frank Cottrell Boyce, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo, Polly Horvath, Grace Lin, Hilary McKay, Louis Sachar, Laura Amy Schlitz, Jerry Spinelli, Rebecca Stead, N. D. Wilson, Lisa Yee — these are only some of the authors writing superb books for middle graders. Into the midst of such treasure, however, creeps a troubling trend. The immense success of young adult books, written for teens and known to everyone as YA, has been overshadowing the quieter middle grade category and, in some cases, threatening to subsume it.

For example, a list of “The Greatest Girl Characters of Young Adult Literature,” published online by The Atlantic Wire in 2012, was made up almost entirely of middle grade stalwarts like Meg Murry, Harriet M. Welsch, Claudia Kincaid, and, even worse, those marvelous young girls our seven- and eight-year-olds read about: Ramona Quimby and Pippi Longstocking. I’m happy to say that a great outcry ensued, leading to a mea culpa from The Atlantic Wire, plus an excellent discussion of what exactly YA is (among other things, books written about and for teens, not children). Another example: a 2012 NPR online poll, “Best-Ever Teen Novels? Vote for Your Favorites,” got into a mess when it — correctly — rejected all the votes for middle grade books. Much complaining followed, which led to further explanations, which led to…more complaining. And still the mix-ups come, though not all are so public. Just ask any middle grade writer when was the last time he or she had to run the so-you-write-YA gauntlet. Then hold onto your hat.

Some of this confusion is understandable. Long before YA was dreamt of (most say sometime in the sixties), children’s books were written in which the characters grew from childhood into adolescence and even adulthood. To name a few: Little Women, the Anne of Green Gables series, the Betsy-Tacy series, and the Little House series. So should we now re-categorize them as YA? No. The children’s book world, if not the general public, is certain of that. Those books were written for children, are safe and appropriate for children, and would probably bore the socks off any teenager reading them for reasons other than a nostalgic return to her own childhood. Then there’s the more recent Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling’s behemoth, which brought on further category confusion by starting out in middle grade, then aging into YA as Harry himself aged into adolescence. On top of all that, not only is there the sad fact that middle grade is not as snappy and memorable a term as YA, it is also too often seen as a synonym for middle school, which is another thing altogether.

So is all this confusion really a problem? Does it matter? Not in terms of teens or adults reading children’s books, or even of children reading YA books (the less sexual and violent ones, that is). But in terms of maintaining the boundaries of the middle grade category — so that children know where to go for books that address their particular lives — it matters a great deal. Not just to the children who are, like I was, unprotected and floundering, desperately in need of an imagination-filled haven. No, it matters to all children. As Monica Edinger wrote in response to the NPR brouhaha (“Stop Calling Books for Kids ‘Young Adult,’” November 2012 on the Huffington Post), “Those adults who enjoy reading young adult books today like to reminisce about their favorite teen reads. But when they include children’s books among them and call them YA, they are marginalizing the true readership of these books. My fourth grade students are children. They are not young adults.” Exactly. And, besides, claiming Ramona for YA is like your older sister borrowing your favorite sweater to go out with her boyfriend while you have to stay home with the babysitter. It’s just not right.

Those of us who write middle grade books are a proud bunch, certain that our work is important, that we’re building lifelong readers, maybe even saving lives. And we’re absolutely certain that we’re not a part of YA. Please help us keep the boundaries high and childhood safe for children. They need it, and we owe it to them.

From the May/June 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes is the story of a spirited ten-year-old African American girl who works on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation (and hates her namesake). Sugar’s mother died two years ago, and families are leaving the Reconstruction south for a better life up north; except for her secret friendship with plantation owner’s son Billy, she feels increasingly alone. When a group of Chinese sugarcane workers arrives, it’s outgoing Sugar who reaches out and unites two very different communities. Rhodes brings Sugar’s experiences — and the Mississippi River setting — vividly to life with spare, evocative language. (Little, Brown, 8–12 years)

In Kirkpatrick Hill’s Bo at Ballard Creek, we meet a little girl who lives with her papas (yes, that’s plural) in an almost-worked-out gold-rush town in 1920s Alaska. Papa Jack and Papa Arvid explain to Bo that her mother was a “good-time girl” who unceremoniously dropped baby Bo into Arvid’s arms and left town. Reminiscent of Little House in the Big Woods, this cheerful episodic story follows Bo through the course of a year. The simple pen-and-ink drawings further the Wilder resemblance, but LeUyen Pham’s are more sophisticated, befitting the era and situations. (Holt, 8–12 years)

Devoted readers anxious to know what happened to Montana homesteader Hattie after Newbery Honor–winning Hattie Big Sky get their wish in Kirby Larson’s big-city sequel, Hattie Ever After. Hattie follows a traveling vaudeville troupe to San Francisco to pursue her dream of becoming a reporter. Larson’s excellent research makes the early twentieth century come alive: Hattie experiences an earthquake, flies in an airplane, and interviews President Woodrow Wilson. Fans will be gratified by the protagonist’s transformation from a “country mouse” into a confident, independent young woman. (Delacorte, 10–14 years)

In One Came Home by Amy Timberlake, thirteen-year-old Georgie Burkhardt is content with her life in Placid, Wisconsin. When older sister Agatha is found dead (but unrecognizable) at the side of the road, Georgie is certain that there has been a mistake. With her sister’s unwelcome suitor Billy McCabe, Georgie sets off to find her sister, or, at least, to find out how she died. The adversarial relationship between Georgie and Billy provides superb comic relief in this gripping, gritty 1870s–set story. (Knopf, 10–14 years)

From the May 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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