Next month marks a perennially delightful reading challenge: Middle Grade March! If you’re in need of some fun suggestions, I have a few! Here are some middle grade novels (some vintage, some recent) that I have enjoyed. I’ll link to previous mentions of these books, where I talk a bit more about them!

Ginnie and Geneva by Catherine Woolley [1940s friendship story]
The Secret School by Avi and its sequel, The Secret Sisters [historical fiction set in 1925 Colorado]
The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong [HF set in Holland]
Waiting for the Magic by Patricia MacLachlan [contemporary family story with fantasy elements]
Stand in the Wind by Jean Little [1970s friendship story]
Alice Atherton’s Grand Tour by Lesley M. M. Blume [HF set in 1927 France]
R My Name is Rachel by Patricia Reilly Giff [HF set in 1930s New York]
The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo [HF with fantasy elements]
Family Grandstand & Family Sabbatical by Carol Ryrie Brink [1950s family stories]
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai [HF verse novel set in 1970s Vietnam & Alabama]
Honey Butter by Millie Florence [contemporary friendship story]
Rosetown by Cynthia Rylant [HF set in 1970s Indiana]
Hope in the Valley by Mitali Perkins [HF set in 1980s California]
From Anna by Jean Little (HF set in 1930s Germany & Canada]

and of course, my own books!

The Star That Always Stays [HF set in 1910s Michigan]
The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry [HF set in 1910s Michigan]
The Blossoming Summer [HF set in 1940s England & Wisconsin]

I often see people looking for Christmas book recommendations, especially stories to share with children. In this post, I want to give a few suggestions of books that fit the following criteria:

1) Not very long (I tend to see readers looking for short books around Christmastime, and usually that’s what I want too!)

2) Vintage vibes (of course)

3) Easy enough to find

Let’s begin!

1. MOLLY’S SURPRISE (1986): My favorite of all the American Girl Christmas books is this third Molly book by Valerie Tripp. It’s so cozy, vintage, and yet with an emotional thread throughout. Best of all, it has a very happy ending! (I don’t like sad Christmas stories. 😉 )

2. TIN CAN SERENADE (2013) by Amanda Dykes: Look no further than this short story for a warm Christmas tale with wonderful cast of child and adult characters. It’s also completely free on Kindle!

3. NOEL STREATFEILD’S CHRISTMAS STORIES (2018): This is a wonderful collection of holiday stories from the beloved author of Ballet Shoes and so many other favorites. Several of them feature dancing and acting, which of course were Noel’s specialties.

4. THE TWENTY-FOUR DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1964) by Madeleine L’Engle is a book I discovered last Christmas and enjoyed so much! It’s the prequel (written later, I believe?) to Meet the Austins, which I also loved. A sweet story of a little girl who is uncertain about the birth of her younger sibling as Christmas approaches.

5. THE LIGHT AT TERN ROCK (1951) by Julia Sauer is a little-known Newbery novel that is atmospheric and thought-provoking, and set at a lighthouse. What could be better? 🙂

6. FROM ANNA (1972) by Jean Little: This moving story of a nine-year-old girl who is uprooted from Germany in the 1930s and forced to come to terms with her limited eyesight is one of the finest Christmas stories I’ve ever read.

A bonus: if you haven’t yet read the Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright, there are magnificent Christmas chapters in The Four-Story Mistake and Spiderweb for Two! Take a look at these dazzling quotes from Four-Story:

Randy threw her arms around Cuffy’s neck. “Oh, I love Christmas Eve!” she cried. “Even better than Christmas I love it. Because everything’s just about to happen!”

and:

” … there was the lighted Christmas tree, come into its own at last: a shimmering mirage, a tree of Paradise, a pyramid of jewels.”

What books do you love to read as Christmas draws near? Let me know in the comments!

I hope you are having a lovely spring! I am having such a good time planting a few early seeds, doing some weeding, and watching a certain chickadee gather materials for her nest. But as usual, I’m also deep in the throes of rewriting a novel (I’m at 26k), and I’m enjoying my reading as well.

With the assistance of a helpful librarian at the Kerlan Collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries, I was recently able to acquire some scans of Maud Hart Lovelace’s research materials for Emily of Deep Valley (1950), which provided an interesting window of insight into Lovelace’s method of pre-writing (at least for Emily). I’m very much fascinated by the behind-the-scenes processes of my favorite writers, which I am sure will inspire many more blog posts like this one today and this one from last year, which explores L.M. Montgomery’s possible influence on the novels of Noel Streatfeild and Margaret Sutton. That is my particular area of interest: how writers are influenced by the authors who came before them.

Speaking of scans from the Kerlan Collection, I was also able to study a letter written in 1958 by Noel Streatfeild to Elizabeth Enright, who was evidently one of her favorite authors. In this letter, Streatfeild complimented the Melendy Quartet books and wondered if perhaps the Melendy children’s father remarried after the series ended. Since this is exactly the idea that flitted through my brain the last time I read the series, I was utterly delighted by this and by the fact that Streatfeild wrote about the family as if they were real.

This example, too, fits into my niche of fascination, and leaves me with no doubt that Streatfeild was inspired by Enright when writing her own novels. Best of all, Streatfeild also mentioned how happy she was that Enright liked her books. This was perhaps the greatest discovery of all, for there are Streatfeild-esque traces in Enright’s The Four-Story Mistake (1942), in which Shakespeare-quoting Mona gets a job as a radio actress. (And the fact that Randy is an aspiring ballerina seals the deal.) Since the first Melendy book (The Saturdays) wasn’t published until 1941—and Ballet Shoes was from 1936—it’s safe to say that Streatfeild’s stage-inclined characters could have served as inspirations for the Melendy sisters.

Along similar lines is the way that Canadian author Jean Little (who sadly passed away last year) was influenced by L.M. Montgomery. My introduction to Montgomery’s Anne of Ingleside (1939), the sixth book in the Anne series and a recent re-read, was somewhat unusual. I was reading Little’s Spring Begins in March (1966), the sequel to her acclaimed Mine for Keeps (1962), and I came to the great scene where Meg’s grandmother reads aloud Anne of Ingleside. I had always steered clear of the book, thinking it sounded dull, but Little made the story sound so interesting that I had to give it a try.

I was subsequently swept up into the Ingleside world and immediately read Rainbow Valley (1919) and then Rilla of Ingleside (1921), despite repeated warnings from my older sisters that Walter died and it was Very Sad. But what made reading Rilla particularly interesting was that I had also just read another sequel of Jean Little’s: Listen for the Singing (1977), the heart-wrenching encore to From Anna (1972). The parallels between Listen for the Singing and Rilla of Ingleside are unmistakable: two Canadian wartime novels focused on a teenage girl’s coming of age alongside a brother who does not want to go to war (and yet who goes anyway, with ensuing tragedy). Since I already knew that Little had read Montgomery from that scene in Spring Begins in March, I wondered if she had modeled Anna Solden’s brother Rudi off of Walter Blythe. I suspect that it was an influence, whether consciously or not, and I hope to someday find a bit more concrete evidence to support my theory. Little was not without criticism of Montgomery—an article she wrote for Canadian Children’s Literature in 1975 confirms that—but she also praised the way Montgomery wrote her child characters.

But lest you think that Montgomery only inspired other writers and was not inspired by any herself, this is far from the case! When recently reading Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline, I was enraptured by the Acadian tale but also enormously pleased to realize that here was where Montgomery doubtlessly found inspiration for her own prose. The tone and style and word choice convinced me, and this paragraph in her 1929 novel Magic for Marigold clinched it:

Lazarre was playing his fiddle behind the copse of young spruces back of the apple-barn—the old brown fiddle that his great-great-great-grandfather had brought from Grand Pré. Perhaps Evangeline had danced to it. Aunt Marigold had told Marigold the story of Evangeline.

But although poetry was a major source of influence for Montgomery, it was not her only inspiration. I’m fairly certain that she read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868-9)—I know I’ve read this fact somewhere but I can’t remember where at the moment—and it’s fun to note that Alcott uses the phrase “kindred spirit” twice in Little Women; the phrase that Montgomery borrowed so memorably for Anne of Green Gables. Nowadays, the words “kindred spirit” are almost synonymous with Anne and Montgomery, and I love that it was perhaps Alcott who helped to influence Montgomery’s usage of the phrase.

These are just a few of the tidbits I’ve been pondering lately—including how Maud Hart Lovelace, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, may have been inspired by Montgomery’s books—but I shall have to close now. In any event, I’ll probably return to this subject soon, because I’m finding it pretty fun to wade through all this bookish conjecture!

And speaking of bookish conjecture … I have some *very exciting* news coming up hopefully later this year, so if you’d like to be one of the first to know, make sure you’re signed up to my newsletter!

Recently Read: The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright
Currently Reading: Depend on Katie John by Mary Calhoun, Nothing to Do but Stay by Carrie Young

In this third post in my seasonal series, I’m highlighting the middle grade and YA books that are most suited to winter! They are especially perfect for those long afternoons by the glow of the Christmas tree, watching tufts of cotton snow fall outside the window as you indulge in the peacefulness of the season.

Maggie Rose: Her Birthday Christmas by Ruth Sawyer
A forgotten gem from a renowned author of the mid-20th century, this marvelous novel could really be considered a summer story more than winter one, as much of the book takes place in summer. But the final chapters come to a climactic crescendo at Christmastime, when a little girl’s dream of hosting an enormous “birthday Christmas” celebration finally comes to fruition. The elegant prose, captivating descriptions of the coast of Maine, and magnificent ending make this one of my very favorite books. It’s out of print now, but available to read for free on Open Library!

Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas Treasury
This collection of lovely Christmas tales by Louisa May Alcott is an absolute joy. My grandmother gave me this book two Christmases ago, and I read each story with delight, savoring Alcott’s sympathetic characters and happy endings.

Patty Fairfield by Carolyn Wells
Originally published in 1902, the first volume in the Patty Fairfield series follows 14-year-old Patty as she lives with each of her aunts in one unforgettable (and highly amusing!) year of picnics, parties, and adventures.

Friendly Gables by Hilda van Stockum
In this post, I detailed all the reasons why I love Hilda van Stockum’s Mitchell family trilogy, and this final book in the series is definitely the best of the three! Taking place in March and April in post-World War II Montreal, this sweet family story includes brand-new twin babies in the house, a secret meeting place, and an unpleasant housekeeper (who just might have a heart of gold). This novel has the feeling of a Christmas tale to me, but perhaps that’s because I read it for the first time as an 8-year-old right before Christmas! 🙂

The Family at Caldicott Place by Noel Streatfeild
One of my all-time favorite novels, this is a warm, uplifting depiction of a family struggling to cope with enormous loss. When a city family in reduced circumstances unexpectedly inherits a vast estate in the British countryside, their lives—and the lives of three unusual children who become their boarders—are changed forever.

Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories by L.M. Montgomery
Much like Louisa May Alcott’s collection of Christmas tales, this is another unforgettable compilation of stories filled with hope, goodwill, and the importance of family. Chapters of Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Windy Poplars are included in this book, along with many stories about other characters.

Jack and Jill by Louisa May Alcott
I read this book last Christmas, and I fell in love with the large cast of warmhearted characters—most importantly conscientious Jack and impetuous Jill, whose sledding accident at the start of the novel is the catalyst for a series of heartwarming events in their close-knit village.

Betsy in Spite of Herself by Maud Hart Lovelace
The sixth installment in the Betsy-Tacy series, this book follows Betsy Ray through her sophomore year of high school in 1907, as she attempts to transform her typical vivacious self into a “dramatic and mysterious” personality. She also visits her friend Tib in Milwaukee for a splendid Christmas celebration (which is very fun to read)!

From Anna by Jean Little
I cannot recommend this novel enough. In fact, I should really dedicate an entire blog post to this achingly beautiful middle grade by popular Canadian children’s author Jean Little. The moving story of a nine-year-old girl who is uprooted from Germany in the 1930s and forced to come to terms with her limited eyesight, is one of the finest Christmas stories I’ve ever read. The rhythmic writing, realistic characters, and timeless message continue to amaze me every time I pick up this book.