25 of the best new middle grade novels

These titles are the very best of new middle grade novels released so far this year.

16. 'Threatened,' by Eliot Schrefer

In "Threatened," orphan Luc is rescued from debt servitude by an Arab man calling himself Professor, or Prof. Together, they travel deep into the jungles of Gabon to observe the behavior of chimpanzees. Luc sometimes finds Prof’s ideas ridiculous, but with no family or resources, he has little choice but to follow along.

As the two begin watching the chimps, Luc is shocked at their distinctive personalities and almost human emotions. Just as Luc is becoming accustomed to research in the forest, Prof mysteriously disappears and Luc finds himself all alone in a battle for survival in the forest.

It must be said that Luc’s personal story is a wildly implausible and unrealistic account that at times feeds into Western stereotypes about countries in Africa. But the well-developed chimpanzee characters and their struggles make the book compelling and worthwhile. And as a novel about animals – rather than a novel about Gabon – it works well. (Ages 8 to 12)

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“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

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But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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