2019/2020 Project Lit for Middle Grade

Isabella is only eleven, but she is already so used to hearing about how "exotic" and unusual she is due to her black father and white mother that she is sick of her biracial identity. Now that her parents are divorced and fighting over her worse than ever, Isabella needs a way to define herself so she can feel not like two halves, but a whole.

It is the summer of 1863, and as the Civil War rages between dinosaur-mounted armies down south, and a tense New York City seems on the brink of exploding into riots, Magdalys Roca and the other children at the Colored Orphan Asylum are trying to survive; but when she receives a letter telling her that her brother Montez was wounded, Magdalys knows that somehow she must reach him--and just possibly her ability to communicate telepathically with dinosaurs...

Arturo Zamora must save his family's restaurant before a land developer destroys it. He teams up with the funny, cute new girl, Carmen, to thwart the developer's plans and help bring the community together.

Mia Tang and her immigrant parents are not exactly living the American dream since moving here from China--they live in the Calivista Motel, and Mia must tend to its guests. Her parents, meanwhile, have been hiding illegal immigrants in the motel's empty rooms, risking the wrath of the owner, Mr. Yao. Mia wants to be a writer, but her mother discourages her because she is better at math and also because English is not her first language.

Cousins Otto and Sheed Alston aren't quite ready to return to school after summer break. Although they might wish for a little more time to be free of the daily grind of the classroom, they didn't mean to actually freeze time. Now they'll have to figure out how to put things back to normal.

"Merci Suárez knew that sixth grade would be different, but she had no idea just how different. For starters, Merci has never been like the other kids at her private school in Florida, because she and her older brother, Roli, are scholarship students. They don't have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition. So when bossy Edna Santos sets her sights on the new boy who happens to be...

Sent with her mother to the safety of a relative's home in Cincinnati when her Syrian hometown is overshadowed by violence, Jude worries for the family members who were left behind as she adjusts to a new life with unexpected surprises.

Twelve-year-old Güero, a red-headed, freckled Mexican American border kid, discovers the joy of writing poetry, thanks to his seventh grade English teacher. Told in verse format.