middle-grade fiction

What scared you as a kid? Monsters? Ghosts? The thing in your closet? The perilous state of the environment and the terrible carbon footprint of children’s toys?

If it’s any of the former then you’re in good company. (If it’s the latter then boy did we need you in 1987!) This week’s guests understand the fear that makes the childlike mind tick and tock, they know how to get under young skin, and they know how to inject a little hope into the horror. 

Ally Malinenko, Dan Poblocki and Lora Senf are three of the finest middle-grade authors around. Their books, This Appearing House, Tales to Keep You Up at Night and The Clackity present three very different kinds of nightmares to challenge, inspire and slightly terrify readers age 8-12.

In this middle-grade special we dive deep into each of their book, to examine how horror works for younger readers. When does a lot become too much? And what can we say to the gatekeepers and politicians who would rather these precious children not read such awful things. It’s an important question, cos, after all, kids are the ones who are going to have to both survive and save this world – so let’s at least prepare them with some horrors they can conquer in the here and now.

This is a longer episode, and a slightly left-turn. But it’s also a lot of fun and surprisingly dark. 

Enjoy!

The Clackity is published June 28th by Atheneum

This Appearing House is published August 16th by Katherine Tegen Books

Tales to Keep You Up at Night is published August 16th by Penguin Workshop

Other books discussed in this episode include:

• Hoodoo (2015), by Ronald L. Smith
• Hide and Don’t Seek, and Other Very Scary Stories (20212), by Anica Mrose Rissi
• Ghost Love (2020), by Dennis Mahoney
• The Nest (2015), by Kenneth Oppell
• It Looks Like Us (2022), by Alison Ames
• Liars Room (2021), by Dan Poblocki
• The House With a Clock in Its Walls (1973), by John Bellairs
• Wait Till Helen Comes: A Ghost Story (1986), by Mary Downing Hahn
• “The Raft”, in Skeleton Crew (1985), by Stephen King 
• The Haunted Book (2012), by Jeremy Dyson

To find out more about my friend Amy Sarthou and her Portable Magic project to increase inclusive school reading – you can follow her on instagram at PortableMagic_reads_books

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Subscriber-only episode

In a new book for middle-grade readers (and for those of any older ages), a young boy helps his grandfather through the challenges of Alzheimer's disease. This Last Adventure is the creation of novelist Ryan Dalton, who got the idea for this book and wrote it a few years after watching his own grandfather die from complications of Alzheimer's. This month, Mental Health Awareness Month, we are taking the opportunity to focus on communication about mental health.
Gail talks with Ryan about writing the book, about some of his other writing and teaching work, and about advice he would give other writers on the same path as his.
Ryan's website is http://www.ryandaltonwrites.com. You can find information there about his books, classes, and his public appearances.

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The Brainwave Podcast is produced and presented by WindWord Group Publishing and Media. 
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The Brainwave Podcast is produced and presented by Gail Hulnick and The WindWord Group Publishing & Media.

Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk chat with Mary Sullivan, author of the novel-in-verse, High.

Mary Sullivan is the author of Dear Blue Sky, a middle grade novel for which she won the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Award. Her other novels include Stay and Ship Sooner, and she has ghostwritten for the Beacon Street Girls series. She is the also the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Literature, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a St. Botolph’s Award. She was chosen as one of the Border’s Original New Voices. She is a freelance editor and teaches at Harvard Extension and Summer School.  Mary lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and their four children. She can be found at: marysullivan.net

Fitzroy Books will be publishing Mary's middle-grade novel in verse, High, that features fourteen-year-old Ceti, who is a star on the soccer field but struggles at home with her mother's heroin addiction.  

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