HeyJaredReading Middle Grade
Get weekly tailored book recommendations for tweens ages 8-14, from Afoma Umesi, the founder of Reading Middle Grade.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 15
- Latest publication
- Sep 30, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Aug 28, 2026
Latest issues
Do boys really have enough books? (opens the original)
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<img alt="woman reading book on orange sofa" class="sizing-normal" height="810" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Yrvr!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2d81470f-d7b7-4bb
The 15 life-changing children’s books that got our kid reviewers into reading (opens the original)
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If you’ve been following our series on Raising Readers, thank you! Today, I’m sharing the third round of insights I gained from surveying 27 different families—parents of our Junior Reviewers—about how they raised passionate young readers. In the first post, they shared <a href="https://readingmiddlegrade.substack.com/p/how-to-raise-kids-who-love-readi
Five Kids, One Book: A Tale of Plagues and Perfumes by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski (opens the original)
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Welcome back to Five Kids, One Book—the series where we send one buzzy middle grade book to five different young readers and share their thoughts to help you figure out whether the book is right for the kids in your life.If you’re new here, here’s how it works. We always choose a genre faithful (someone who loves the kind of book we’re reviewing) and a variance pick (someone who’s admitted to disliking exactly this kind of book) and a group of other readers who fall somewhere in between. The kid
Book Trailer of the Week: Just Right Jillian (opens the original)
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I write often about how much we need YA books for older middle schoolers and young teens, but another gap I’ve been noticing lately is the young middle grade gap. It feels like at least 80% of middle grade protagonists are 12 years old. Whether or not they’re acting appropriate for their age is a whole other discourse, but this spike in 12 year olds, which I assume is to appeal to the older readers, is leaving us with a realistic fiction gap in the 7-9 age group. I hear from many 3rd and 4th gra
Ask Afoma: The Wings of Fire devotee who also loves realistic graphic novels (opens the original)
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Once every few years, a new fantasy book comes in and takes the kidlit world by storm. In 2012, the first Wings of Fire book by Tui T. Sutherland was published. Since then, the series (now over 10 books strong) has been steadily gaining fans.Now, fantasy is not a genre that I have too much experience with. I rely heavily on my colleagues and our Junior Reviewers to stay up to date with what’s hot and trending in the fantasy world. So I was happy to see that today’s matchmaking request comes from
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