Each year, Cracking the Cover compiles a list of books that make great gifts. These are middle-grade books published in and/or reviewed in 2023.
Browsing: ages 10 & up
A boy learns life lessons while learning to play chess in Not an Easy Win, a middle-grade novel by Chrystal D. Giles.
A young orphan finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation in The Night Raven, a novel by Johan Rundberg and translated by A. A. Prime.
A boy dreams of going to space with his disabled brother in Farther Than the Moon, a middle-grade novel by Lindsay Lackey.
A girl struggles to find her place in the world as her neighborhood burns down around her in Remember Us, by Jacqueline Woodson.
After his stepfather is arrested for domestic violence, a boy must figure out how best to use his hands in Hands, by Torrey Maldonado.
A girl with lots of questions — and opinions — gains the confidence to say what she feels in Opinions and Opossums, by Ann Braden.
Forced to hide her new-found magic, a girl digs up information on the corrupt government in Seagarden, Book 2 in Michelle A. Barry’s Plotting the Stars series.
Carole Boston Weatherford and her son, Jeffery Boston Weatherford, craft a portrait of a Black family tree in Kin: Rooted in Hope.
Learn about one of the first Black nurses in the Civil War in Susie King Taylor: Nurse Teacher & Freedom Fighter, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Candace Buford.