Category Archives: Recs: Middle Grades

Generally 4th-8th, but depends on the person!

Read This! The Amazing Generation

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After reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation (Book-of-the-Month in April 2024), I immediately wished there was a youth-friendly version to help open the eyes of kids and teens to the effects of smartphones, screens, and social media. I’m pleased to recommend The Amazing Generation, which was released a couple of weeks ago!

Haidt teamed up with Catherine Price, who wrote How to Break Up With Your Phone (updated & revised in 2025). The book does a great job of explaining data and statistics, and exposing the dark side of what tech companies have done to get especially young people addicted to their screens, in an age-appropriate way. It’s alarming without being too intense and dark for kids. The sweet spot is probably around 3rd grade and up, but it varies with each kid, so I recommend parents checking it out first.

It helps that the book is in full-color, with call-outs of key statistics, quotes from people young and old, and profiles of Rebels who are fighting against the Wizards and their Cursed Stones (reference to the opening story, which intrigued all of the kids I read it to). It super helps that there’s a graphic novel interspersed throughout the book. One 6th grade girl said, “This book is too informative. I like the graphic novel parts though.” 🤣 Rather than take that as defeat, I was glad she liked those parts, and hope she’ll read at least some of the “too informative” parts. A 5th grader and 7th grader I know both give the book a thumbs up.

Some of you might be surprised of my recommendation, knowing how I feel about graphic novels (post forthcoming), but with this topic, I take the “by any means necessary” perspective, and if the graphic novel genre draws more young people to read the book, I’m all for it! This book is part of the “E” part of “FEAST” in The Tech Exit (Book-of-the-Month September 2025), and I’m thankful for this resource to educate ourselves and our kids and teens, and to start family conversations around tech use. You can suggest it to read for your family book club, or ease into it by reading the book yourself in sight of your kid so they’re curious about the book, or even leave it lying around the house. They’re bound to pick it up and read some, if not all, of it. The goal is to start the conversation!

This book is a great read for adults, too. The Amazing Generation distilled the core ideas of The Anxious Generation (though I still recommend that one for you all, too!), and it was helpful that the angle is positive, focusing on what can we do together to reclaim childhood rather than giving up and saying, “It is what it is.” And the call to action to be a rebel against “The Man” is always the way to my heart. Let’s be part of the revolution!

Wingfeather Saga Read Aloud (by the author!)

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After last week’s read aloud, I was thinking about what to read next. Lately people have been asking me about whether I’d heard of this series called The Wingfeather Saga, so I was going to read book #1 for you all. I had already done my first few chapters! But like many authors during this time of quarantine, Andrew Peterson (yes, that Andrew Peterson, the Christian singer-songwriter) is posting nightly story time videos you can check out here. So the author himself beat me to it!

I was also curious to know why the series was coming up in conversation more often these days, because this was a series that came out more than ten years ago. And here is what I discovered. The books have been re-released with a brand new cover, and there was a fair amount of publicity about the series.

Here are the original covers of the edition I’ve had ever since Bibliopolis opened five years ago. I have had very little success “selling” these books to people.

Perfectly respectable covers, but not very eye-catching, I guess. It’s a classic look that would only be compelling to more…mature (read: old) readers. Even my most avid readers have done the slow, drawn out, “Uuuuum…weeeeeell…” which is their equivalent of “No, thanks.”

And here are the 2020 covers for books 1 and 2:

More modern and epic fantasy series looking, wouldn’t you say? I don’t know if you realized books get little refreshers like this, but it is necessary to keep drawing in new generations of readers. Ironically enough, timeless classics remain so by modernizing their covers! We say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” but publishers and authors know the power of the cover.

All this to say, I do hope more readers will take up this series, as it is quite engrossing! As for my read aloud, stay tuned. 🙂

Have you read the series? What are your thoughts?

 

 

 

 

Good Friday: a Misnomer?

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Today is Good Friday. When I was younger I was confused by this because what was so good about Jesus dying? Shouldn’t it be called Bad Friday? Over the years, I have grown in my understanding of the gospel, and how the bad news is what makes the good news truly good. The bad news of my sin necessitates the badness — the excruciating pain and suffering — of the cross, the cross that is my cross. But the story doesn’t end there. When all hope is lost, Jesus willingly takes my place. And in that Great Exchange, something so terrible becomes something wondrous, beautiful, and Good with a capital “G.”

One of my favorite parts from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe captures this in the way that only C.S. Lewis can:

…”though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

-Chapter 15, “Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time”

I was moved by this video Passion City Church made for their Good Friday Service a few years back*. Thankful for the creative people who can communicate the power of the cross to make Death itself start working backward, and turn bad news into truly good news.

*They have several other Good Friday videos that are just as moving.