Books from my Kidhood

Okay, so I am twenty-one (I think?) but I LOVE middle-grade books, so here's a list of books that I loved enough to remember nearly a decade later. Most of them are mysteries or deal with puzzles and logic, but there are a few that deviate from that. I hope you check some of them out and if so, tell me if you liked them!

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin - Read this one for school. Very good mystery from what I remember

The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg - Think this one was also for school. First-ever book I read that had an omniscient narrator

Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett - This book was my introduction to Jacques Vermeer, who is an awesome Dutch artist of the 1600s. It's a really good mystery

The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart - I distinctly remember these books being a minimum of 400 pages long and I LOVED every second. I guess I should've made an explanation for all of these books, huh? Fuck. I'll fix it at some point. Anyway, if you choose this book, do it soon because a movie is being made about it.

The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch - I love this book series so much! I started reading the series when I was nine I think and I loved it. My favourite part is the fucking footnotes (very funny). He's like if Lemony Snicket and one of those snarky YouTubers like SixteenLeo (Who I'm listening to currently) or Nick Diramio had a child that wrote books for kids. I would ESPECIALLY recommend his book, Write this Book, especially if you're writing for kids. It's really funny.

Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey - Okay, this is probably the least sophisticated book on this list but I literally love this book series. It's so funny and childish and I'm in love with it. Every page is a visual gag or something silly, which I think you can enjoy if you're young or old, but if you have a small human in your life that hates books, maybe slide this their way.

Hide and Seek by Ida Vos - So, while the ones above are fun and silly for the most part, this one is a departure from that. I was ten-ish when I first read this book, which is about a little girl who lives through the Holocaust. This one stands out from the other Holocaust books I read as a kid because it follows the trauma and strife after the war ends when the main character and her family are able to go back to living. The book is autobiographically based on the life of the author, which makes it even more hard-hitting.

Wings by Aprilynne Pike - I remember getting this one when I was in my first week in ninth grade. I loved it (until the end but that's just because I was very anti-romance) so much because I love faeries, and this book was the only book I've ever seen include faeries. It's the only young adult novel on here, and while I have qualms with it, it was still noteworthy enough to remember.