In Which I Recommend Another Amazing, Diverse Magic School Book

Though the last book in the series was published almost 20 years ago now, thanks to the popularity of the movies and the theme park attractions based on them, the HP magic school books are firmly ingrained into our culture. 

However, there are new magic books coming out that I have hope may someday dethrone that series in the hearts of children. Last month I told you about Claribel Ortega's Witchlings, which I still highly recommend. But Witchlings isn't alone in creating an imaginative, fun, diverse magical world that holds its own against the HP world. Another fabulous contender is Dhonielle Clayton's The Marvellers, which came out this spring and which I just finished reading. 

In The Marvellers, Clayton imagines a magical society that mostly lives apart from the non-magical, whom they call Fewels. The Marvellers have built floating cities in the sky as well as a school that changes the way it looks every year known as the Arcanum. Starting at age 11, marveller children go and learn to harness their light at the Arcanum. Over the course of their first year, they are exposed to the five Paragons, and at the end of the year they learn their talent and join one of the Paragons. I love that the students aren't immediately boxed into one identity upon arrival. The MC of this book, Ella Durand, is from a magical family but not a Marveller family. Ella is from a Conjuror family. Conjurors are the descendants of slaves living in the Americas and the Caribbean. The Middle Passage changed their magic. They are in charge of the underworld and they use magic differently. They live in enclaves within Fewel cities. Marvellers have looked down on Conjurors for centuries, despite their shared history. Thanks to a change in Marveller law that her own parents pushed for, Ella is the first Conjuror to attend the Arcanum. Any Conjuror child is now welcome, but Ella is the only one who is brave enough to go. She encounters a lot of hate and prejudice, but also makes new friends, including a girl raised among Fewels who hates her magic and a boy with a secret who can talk to animals. The villain in this book is truly nuanced, and there are quite a few morally grey characters. The story tackles prejudice and racism head on, but is able to look at it differently because it takes place in an imaginary world. It tackles tough issues, but it feels like an engaging fantasy adventure and not at all like an issue book. The airborn world of the Marvellers is detailed, well conceived, and incredibly charming. I really want to visit the Arcanum and the floating cities. One thing I love about the book is that the students come from all over the world, which makes for a naturally diverse cast. The language issue is handled by having the students wear magical translation necklaces. As long as two people are wearing their necklaces, they'll hear each other in their native language. One student can be speaking French and another Swahili and there will be no communication problems. This book has so much to offer that the HP world lacks. It has made its way to the New York Times bestseller list. I hope it gets its own movie (or streaming show, which could actually reach a bigger audience) and earns a place in pop culture.

In Which I Gush About Some Queer Middle Grade Books

Before LGBTQIA+ Pride Month ends, I need to get to the post I've been meaning to write recommending some queer MG I've read this summer. First, these books I'm recommending are far from the only ones out there. There's more and more queer kidlit making its way into the world, which is a very good thing. It's a good thing for the queer kids, who are finally able to see themselves in books. It's a good thing for the kids working through their identity to see characters with similar questions. It's also a good thing for cishet kids to see queer kids in the books they read. Both so they understand the struggles those kids can go through and so they see the struggles and joys that are common to all of us, regardless of our sexual and gender identities. Especially in today's climate, when states are passing laws stopping trans kids from getting gender affirming care and/or preventing teachers from talking about LGBTQIA+ people in the classroom, we need to get these books into the hands of kids.  I believe it's my kids' generation that's going to turn the tide and make real progress to stop that toxic heteronormativity of western culture. I still sometimes struggle with "they" as a singular pronoun (even though it's been used in English for hundreds of years to refer to a person whose gender is unknown), but it slips off my kids' tongues naturally. They found out my cousin was gay and marrying another man and they were like, "Hope they have a great marriage." A teen at our church came out as nonbinary, started using they/them pronouns, and changed their preferred name, and my kids along with all the kids in the youth group just rolled with it, even though our church is on the conservative end of the UMC spectrum.

First up in my rundown is Michael Leali's lovely contemporary debut, The Civil War of Amos Abernathy. The writing and narrative style themselves are worthy of note. MC Amos' voice is classic middle grade and a treasure trove for a writer wanting to learn how to master voice. The novel is written alternating Amos' letters to a Civil War soldier who would likely have identified as a trans man if he had lived today with a present tense narrative covering one important day. The narrative combined with the letters slowly reveal what's happening and how important it is for Amos and his community. Amos has spent most of his life volunteering at a living history park of which his mom is the director. He has been out as a gay boy since elementary school, and he suddenly realizes in seventh grade that there are no queer people portrayed at the LHP. Along with his best friend and a new friend on whom he's developed a crush, he goes searching for queer people in the 19th century, including one I won't name who will likely surprise you. Amos' new friend and crush is from a conservative Christian family and he struggles with his feelings for Amos because he's been told his whole life that they're wrong. One thing I especially love about this book as a queer identifying and LGBTQIA+ affirming Christian myself is that Amos' family are also faithful churchgoers. They just attend a different, open and affirming church. So often religious characters in queer novels are painted exclusively as bigots, or at best as people who are reluctantly accepting but not happy about it. While that is absolutely the case for a portion of people of faith, that doesn't describe anywhere near all of us and I was glad to see both sides shown in this novel.

In the Key of Us by Miriam J. Lockington gives us two queer Black girls experiencing first love at a prestigious music summer camp. I know from twitter interactions with the author that the camp was inspired by a camp that my brother attended for many years and, based on what I know of it from him, the portrayal of the environment at a camp like that was pretty spot on. In addition to giving us a sweet first love story between two girls, this books addresses what it's like to be a BIPOC in a heavily white environment. It also tackles issues of grief, guilt, self-harm, and family pressure. Told in dual POV, this book and is thoughtful and tackles important issues without feeling like a heavy "issue book".

The Mirrorwood by Deva Fagan is a secondary world fantasy loosely inspired by the story of Sleeping Beauty. While the MC, Fable, is cishet, I believe it deserves a mention in a rundown of queer kidlit because the world Fagan has created is queernormative. Fable has a nonbinary sibling who uses they/them pronouns and this is not in any way remarkable. Families with two dads and two moms are mentioned in the villages Fable visits as a matter of course. In the world created for this book, being queer is just a part of some people's identity. There's no indication that they encounter prejudice or pushback of any kind. Both queer kids and cishet kids (and adults!) can benefit from seeing a world like this.

If forced to name the queer MG book I read this summer that's the most important, it would have to be David Levithan's Answers in the Pages. It's a short little book (I read it in one afternoon) following a boy whose mom starts a campaign to have a book his teacher (who is gay) assigns based on one sentence at the end about the two boys in the book loving each other. The MC's story is interspersed with chapters from the (made up) book showing just how incredibly innocuous and age appropriate the book is. A third narrative, which seems to sit apart from the other two until they all dovetail at the end, follows two junior high boys whose friendship is growing into a mutual crush, and who aren't sure how to handle their feelings for each other. This book resonated with me as a parent because, when my 17yo was in elementary school, my reaction to a book with two boys who might be in love with each other would have been closer to the MC's mom's reaction than I would like to admit to myself. I don't think I would have moved to have such a book removed from the classroom, but I would have been uncomfortable with it and would have at least thought internally along the lines of the argument his mom gives. She's not portrayed as a bigot who hates all gay people. She just has an idea that kids don't need to think about their sexuality until at least high school and for that reason it will just confuse them to have gay people mentioned in books they read in elementary school. That's a pretty common view for Gen Xers and millenials who are the parents of kids in school right now. We were never exposed to gay characters in books until high school at the very earliest and it can feel weird to us for our kids to read the books available now. Yes, some of the people (maybe even most of the people) moving to ban books really are hateful bigots. Others are like the MC's mom, people who have a generational misunderstanding of what kids can "handle" in the books they read, and whose minds can be changed (as this mom's mind is) when they stop to really listen to the other side.

I hope you'll pick up some of these books if you haven't read them and consider passing them on to the children in your life. If you have other great queer kidlit recs, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.