Talk about the kidlit you're reading!

remister

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Does anyone have recommendations for funny middle grade? Ya is OK, too. Not like Diary of Wimpy Kid or Captain Underpants funny, but like Absolutely True Diary of A Part-time Indian funny.
 

Brightdreamer

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Does anyone have recommendations for funny middle grade? Ya is OK, too. Not like Diary of Wimpy Kid or Captain Underpants funny, but like Absolutely True Diary of A Part-time Indian funny.

Have you tried Carl Hiaasen? Chomp is YA, a quite amusing send-up of "reality" TV set in the Everglades.

Terry Pratchett wrote some books that could count as MG and YA - humor with some real tooth under the surface. Try the Tiffany Aching series (starting with The Wee Free Men), or The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. (Wasn't quite as fond of his Bromeliad trilogy - first book titled Truckers - which felt more juvenile and obvious, but it might be worth a go.)

Eoin Colfer writes some MG you might look into; try his standalone The Wish List, about a dead girl who must help an old man fulfill his bucket list. (His Artemis Fowl books also are fun, though I thought they wore thin after the third book.)

Jonathan Stroud writes some great upper MG books; his Bartimaeus series (first book: The Amulet of Samarkand) mixes hilarity with bite.

Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz series (first book: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians) is a hilarious send-up of fantasy tropes and books in general.

I got a real kick out of Platte F. Clarke's Bad Unicorn and Wade Albert White's The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes, too, though they might skew a bit silly for you.
 

Kjbartolotta

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Does anyone have recommendations for funny middle grade?

Everything Brightdreamer said (Bartimaeus is one of my favorite book series, period), but also:

Jack Gantos is the funniest writer on the planet, Dead End in Norvelt was a great Newbery pick. Also the Jack's Book series, and Joey Pigza for slightly younger.

Jackie Ha-Ha by Chris Grabenstein and James Patterson is one of the funniest MG novels I've read in a while, with a sweet, funny, and kind of gross girl MC. I highly recommend this one!

The Schwa Was Here by Neal Shusterman, fast-talking, funny New York kid with a cool premise.

Adam Rex is funny as hell and sends up both fantasy and sci-fi tropes brilliantly. I often worry he's too esoteric for kids, but they LOVE him.

I think I mentioned Ursula Vernon earlier in this thread, all her stuff is pretty perfect for everyone, great mix of snarky and heart. Like Adam Rex, she's very into messing around with tropes and genre in weird and funny ways.

Hillary McKay isn't necessarily comedy per se, mixes in a lot of angst and real life issues, but definitely enough British humor for everyone.

(I'm running out of superlatives, but these are all great books)
 
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remister

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Have you tried Carl Hiaasen? Chomp is YA, a quite amusing send-up of "reality" TV set in the Everglades.

Terry Pratchett wrote some books that could count as MG and YA - humor with some real tooth under the surface. Try the Tiffany Aching series (starting with The Wee Free Men), or The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. (Wasn't quite as fond of his Bromeliad trilogy - first book titled Truckers - which felt more juvenile and obvious, but it might be worth a go.)

Eoin Colfer writes some MG you might look into; try his standalone The Wish List, about a dead girl who must help an old man fulfill his bucket list. (His Artemis Fowl books also are fun, though I thought they wore thin after the third book.)

Jonathan Stroud writes some great upper MG books; his Bartimaeus series (first book: The Amulet of Samarkand) mixes hilarity with bite.

Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz series (first book: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians) is a hilarious send-up of fantasy tropes and books in general.

I got a real kick out of Platte F. Clarke's Bad Unicorn and Wade Albert White's The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes, too, though they might skew a bit silly for you.

Everything Brightdreamer said (Bartimaeus is one of my favorite book series, period), but also:

Jack Gantos is the funniest writer on the planet, Dead End in Norvelt was a great Newbery pick. Also the Jack's Book series, and Joey Pigza for slightly younger.

Jackie Ha-Ha by Chris Grabenstein and James Patterson is one of the funniest MG novels I've read in a while, with a sweet, funny, and kind of gross girl MC. I highly recommend this one!

The Schwa Was Here by Neal Shusterman, fast-talking, funny New York kid with a cool premise.

Adam Rex is funny as hell and sends up both fantasy and sci-fi tropes brilliantly. I often worry he's too esoteric for kids, but they LOVE him.

I think I mentioned Ursula Vernon earlier in this thread, all her stuff is pretty perfect for everyone, great mix of snarky and heart. Like Adam Rex, she's very into messing around with tropes and genre in weird and funny ways.

Hillary McKay isn't necessarily comedy per se, mixes in a lot of angst and real life issues, but definitely enough British humor for everyone.

(I'm running out of superlatives, but these are all great books)

Thank you for these! I'll be checking them out.
 

edutton

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Have you tried Carl Hiaasen? Chomp is YA, a quite amusing send-up of "reality" TV set in the Everglades.
Hiassen is great - Chomp, Hoot, Scat and Flush are all good, funny kidlit. (Hoot was also made into a movie a few years ago.) He's best known for his slightly raunchy adult mysteries, though, so be careful which books you're picking up!

I absolutely adore Eva Ibbotson's MG humorous fantasies (she also wrote several YA romances and some straight YA historical fiction - all good). The MG books generally have some sort of monster-y theme - "Which Witch?", "Dial-A-Ghost", and so on.
 

gmwhitley

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Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz series (first book: Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians) is a hilarious send-up of fantasy tropes and books in general.

We just discovered Alcatraz in our household. My older two (9 and 7) have burned through the series - I started by reading aloud and then they disappeared with the books and read on their own. It was a death match when Book 4 came in the mail over who would get to read first.

I was torn between a growing headache at the noise and pride that my children love to read as much as I do!
 

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Reading the second book of the Land of Stories series. I'm not crazy over it, I like it, but not as much as I liked Fablehaven or Lost Prince. I'm also a tad perplexed how it is so popular. I don't mean this to bash just trying to learn. It seems like a pretty normal fairytale re-telling type of story/series.
 

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I thought the "Land of Stories" series suffered from several cases of telling rather than showing.

Since today is the birthday of Mary Shelley (author of "Frankenstein"), I thought I'd mention one kidlit series involving her, "The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency", which imagines a young Mary Shelley and Ada Lovelace teaming up to solve mysteries in early 19th century London, with cameos from a few other historical figures (such as Charles Dickens as a recurring ally), and it's very entertaining.
 

remister

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Finished another old book-- London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
 

Kjbartolotta

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I don't love Land of Stories, but kids do, so I try not to let my dislike of the series show through too much. Happy to rec it if that's what gets kids reading!

Reading Thornhill by Pam Smy, which in format is a bit like Wonderstruck (one half all text, the other wordless illustrations). Text half is the story of a 'selectively mute' girl living in a UK orphanage in the early eighties, picture half is a girl in the present trying to figure out why the orphanage was abandoned. Very creepy, sad, and tender in its own way, highly recommended though I'm wondering how I would sell it to kids.
 

LittleSimon

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Finnished harry potter and the philosopher's stone again. I just love it so much.
 

remister

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Some MG I've read in the past couple of months I've been more or less MIA from this site:
Wonder.
Echo.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon.
Hour of the Bees.
 
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Recently discovered and really enjoyed "The City of Ember" by Jeanne DuPrau, and looking forward to reading the next two books in the series. If you don't know it, it's about an underground city, lit my hundreds of lamps, with the electricity source being a giant generator. The people of the city of Ember believe that there is nothing but darkness beyond the city boundary. However, things start to go awry when the generator starts to pack up and two kids (the two main characters), Lina and Doon, discover that there is in fact a way out and more than darkness "out there".

Beautifully written too!
 

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One of my latest discoveries was the recently published "The Glass Town Game" by Catherynne M. Valente, a children's portal fantasy with the leads being the Brontes as children, and the fantasy world they go to being based on the stories they imagined for their toy soldiers (alongside several nods to the works they'll write when they grow up, and many other allusions to British history and literature). I enjoyed it a lot.
 

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Reread The Word Eater by Mary Amato. Most underrated book ever! I remember loving this book as a kid... yet only 800 reviews on Goodreads.

Mild spoilers: magic realism about a worm that eats words
 

GeneBWell

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Picked up the BLISS trilogy on a recommendation as a possible comp title for my book. It's good. Real good. I've had multiple laugh-out-loud moments where I had to stop reading and tell my wife what I was laughing about, and the voice is just spot-on. It and UPSIDE DOWN MAGIC are probably my two nominations for a hypothetical best MG voice award.

Anyway, BLISS is good and fun and everyone should read it.
 

GeneBWell

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I finished BLISS and liked it all the way up to the end, which was a huge sequel-bait. As in, I don't even consider the first book a complete story. I mean I have the whole trilogy so I'm set, but I still feel that every book should be able to stand on its own, and BLISS sort of can't. Still an excellent read full of amazing MG voice.

I just got home from Barnes and Noble with THE DRAGON WITH A CHOCOLATE HEART and A DASH OF DRAGON, two cooking-themed fantasy MG novels from 2017. I'm hoping these will turn into good comp novels, and I'm completely floored by how many cooking-related fantasy books there are in MG (okay, so this only makes like 4 or 5, but still). I'm going to crack them open tonight, can't wait to read them.
 

remister

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Read MG:
Better Nate Than Never
Saving Marty
YA:
The Serpent King
Dumplin'
The Sun is Also A Star
 
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DavidBrett

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Re-reading my way through the Skulduggery Pleasant series now Derek Landy has started a new... story-arc, I guess you could call it? It's a new series that continue after the last one was supposed to be the final one, but isn't classified as a separate series of books (like Friday 13th: The Final Chapter and Saw VII were supposed to be the end of their stories).

Also reading some children's steampunk as research for my Oliver Cantrop and Professor Hartigan novel because I enjoyed writing the short stories (working title is "Oliver Cantrop and the Insatiable Rust"). Currently reading Cogheart, then its sequel, then most likely the Mortal Engines books.
 

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Just finished Words of Radiance by Sanderson so jumping from epic fantasy back to MG fantasy again. Bought Rules for Thieves and excited to read it.
 

Kjbartolotta

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I'm not precisely sure how young we can go here, but my latest picture book obsession is I am a Cat by Galia Bernstein. Just do an image search and if it doesn't make you go 'aww', then you are a monster. Also, mildly educational and incredibly skillful economy of language and use of distinct voices in the text.
 

playground

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Finished the Map to Everywhere a couple days ago. Not sure if I'll read the second and third novel.
 

maghranimal

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I'm posting on here for the first time, and when I started reading the first page of this thread, it mentioned blockbuster video. I was like "How long is this thread?!"

Anyways, i'm reading the Out of Abaton series, and recently finished The Jumbies and I'll See You In The Cosmos, which was fantastic, funny, witty. Book 1 of Abaton is a good read so far.
 

playground

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Just bought the final book in the Five Kingdoms' series. Very excited to see how it ends.