Middle Grade Discoveries

Do you ever find yourself leisurely browsing Goodreads (or your book-related website of choice), organizing your bookshelves or checking out your friends' updates or what have you... and you click on one innocent little link to one innocent little book... and that book looks pretty good, so you add it to your to-read shelf... and then you notice there are some related books on the sidebar there, and you think to yourself, "Well, those might be interesting too, I should check those out." ... And then before you know it, you are glued to your computer wide-eyed, clicking away furiously, and you have added 20+ books to your to-read shelf?

This happens to me more often than I should probably admit.

This morning I got hooked on a chain of middle grade recommendations, starting when I went to the Goodreads page for one of my favorite books of my childhood: The Doll in the Garden by Mary Downing Hahn.

Here's the short and sweet description of this ghost story on Goodreads:

"When Ashley discovers a turn-of-the-century doll it is just the first of several puzzling events that lead her through the hedge and into a twilight past where she meets Louise, an ailing child whose beloved doll has mysteriously disappeared."

This book was in my middle school library, and once I discovered this book, I loved it so much that I didn't even browse the shelves anymore when we had library time - I went straight to this book and spent the rest of the period getting a jump start on reading it. I can't tell you how many times I checked this book out from the library, or why I never bought a copy for myself. (I'm going to fix that as soon as I can find it!)

Anyway, I saw a recommendation for another book by Mary Downing Hahn... and as my  recommendation exploring progressed, I was pleasantly surprised to find that she has written other spooky stories!

Then other authors started popping up, and other genres of middle grade books, and now my to-read shelf is many books fuller! If you are a lover of middle grade books, I hope you enjoy browsing my discoveries! :)

I'm thinking this might need to become a "thing." I like sharing discoveries. :)