I have slowly been working my way through the Cybils finalists by category (my favorite categories, besides the one where I’m a panelist.) I’ve finally finished the middle grade fiction finalists, and am including my brief thoughts here. The Cybils website will have bigger blurbs on all of them!

I expect finalists to be good, given the love it takes for a book to get nominated in the first place and the effort that goes into narrowing them all down. This did not disappoint! All of these books made me think and cry, and many of them made me laugh as well. What more can you ask?

Farther than the Moon by Linsday Lackey. Roaring Brook Press, 2023. ISBN 978-1250205209. Read from a library copy.
13-year-old Houston and his younger brother Robbie have long-standing plans to go to space together. It’s part of that shared dream for Houston to go to Space Camp, but Robbie, whose cerebral palsy makes him nonverbal and keeps him in a wheelchair, is left behind. Once at Space Camp, Houston is challenged to find a way to include Robbie without his being there, while at the same time making friends with the various people in his team, from a girl who read to me as autistic to a boy whose arrogance instantly raises Houston’s hackles. He also looks into the history behind why his astronaut grandfather and his mother are no longer talking to each other. There’s a lot to dig into here, with deep emotions especially around Houston and Robbie’s loving relationship balanced against the competition and teamwork of space camp projects.

The Fire, the Water, and Maudie McGinn by Sally J. Pla. Read by Gail Shalan. Quill Tree Books, 2023. ISBN 978-0063268791. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
Maudie has always loved her summers in California with her easy-going dad more than the school year that she spends in Texas with her mother and now her new husband. Her mother wants to make Maudie’s autism “better” by training her to cover it up, and the new boyfriend seems to think he can punish the weirdness out of her. This summer starts off with extra difficulty, though, as wildfires block off their home. After a very challenging night in a shelter – a nightmare for a kid with autism – Maudie and her dad travel to an old friend’s campground where they can stay in an old camper. There, close to the beach, Maudie makes friends for the first time, finds calm and confidence in learning to surf, and works to build up the courage to tell her father just when she wants so desperately to live with him full time. Though I’ve certainly read books by autistic authors before, this is the first book I’ve read explicitly about an autistic kid from an author with the same life experience, and this makes Maudie shine as a character who knows her needs and limitations and is just starting to learn her strengths. This was also the middle grade winner of the 2024 Schneider Family Award.

Hands by Torrey Maldonado. Read by the author. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023. ISBN 9780593323793. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
12-year-old Trevor has loved drawing since he was small. Now, though, he’s having nightmares as his mother’s abusive boyfriend is about to get out of jail. Surely if he learns to use his hands for fighting, he’d be better able to protect his mother and sisters. His best friend is happy to learn with him, but his willingness to use violence attracts teens who’d like to use him as an example and frightens those close to him. Can he find a way to be strong without violence? This novel packs a punch in just 135 pages and excels in showing both the challenges and the tight community relations in Trevor’s underprivileged neighborhood.

No Place Like Home by James Bird. Feiwel & Friends, 2023. ISBN 978-1250877628. Read from a library copy.
Years ago, Opin and Emjay’s mother left their abusive father with nothing but a car. Though she’s done her best to earn a living, working as a waitress or dancing by the side of the road, nothing has ever been enough for them to afford their own apartment. Emjay has always resented this, frequently running away, stealing and more in his attempts to escape, while Opin tries to stay away from him while helping their mother. Opin’s mother draws on their Ojibway heritage in trying to keep their language alive and in viewing their scavenging for abandoned food through fast food restaurants and grocery stores as hunting. When a lost and wounded puppy finds him, Opin is more determined than ever to for them to find a real home. Based on the author’s own childhood experience, this poetic novel shows the resilience and hard work it takes to survive being homeless and the help it takes to get out of it. I really enjoyed the clever use of strikethroughs in the chapter titles, and the hope and good humor underlying all the hard times shown.

Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow. Read by Will Collyer. Disney Hyperion, 2023. ISBN 978-1368082853. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
In a scenario that prevented me from picking this book up for a year after it came out, Simon and his parents have fled to the tiny town of Grin and Bear It, Nebraska, after his surviving a school shooting made him horribly famous. Grin and Bear It has the enormous advantage that cell phones and internet are banned, so that no one here knows Simon’s story. His father runs the too-large Catholic church, which is soon experiencing trouble with a “Jesus squirrel” and his mother takes over the funeral home and its attached residence, which comes with an attack peacock. Simon is able to make two new friends, one of whom decides that the scientists who run the big radio telescope that requires all the radio silence would really be much happier if they heard from some aliens. This already hilarious conceit is made even funnier with the addition of alpacas and pregnant goats on the nearby farms. And of course Simon’s attempts to keep his trauma secret from his friends will cause some problems. One of Simon’s friends (the one who lives on the goat farm) introduces herself as autistic, and I loved that she is shown that way without explaining things like that she doesn’t do small talk and takes everything literally, while still being a great friend. I am so glad I finally read this book. It made me laugh and cry and warmed my heart, and I was absolutely gobsmacked at how Bow was able to put all of this into a cohesive, believable story (okay, maybe except for the Jesus squirrel.) It won the Cybils award for this category as well as Newbery and Schneider Family Award honors and was a National Book Award finalist, all well deserved.

Tethered to Other Stars by Elisa Stone Leahy. Read by Almarie Guerra. Quill Tree Books, 2023. ISBN 978-0063255487. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
Wendy Toledo is starting seventh grade at a new school, since her family has moved from their neighborhood in the city to a run-down house in a smaller town, where she’s aggrieved to find out that her attic bedroom has a large hole in the middle of the floor. Both Wendy’s best friend and her teen brother Tom’s girlfriend had been taken by ICE, and they don’t always take time to check papers, so her family has moved to be safer. (This first part felt so dystopian that it took me a bit to realize that it was contemporary realistic fiction.) While she misses her friend and the close-knit neighborhood, astronomy is the love of her life and she’s thrilled to be going to a magnet science school and have the chance to learn more and perhaps earn a scholarship to an astronomy conference. However, animosity towards non-whites is present here, too, and things are challenging both at school, where some students think she couldn’t really have earned her spot, and at home, where the church that backs their house is sheltering an undocumented woman from ICE, putting ICE perilously close. Though she’s always been taught to lie low and fit in, Wendy will have to stand up for herself and her beliefs if she’s going to shine like a star rather than being pulled into a black hole. With plenty of friendship issues and some school injustice that made me literally shake with rage, this is a wonderful sliding glass door of a book that is both broadening and relatable.

What Happened to Rachel Riley? by Claire Swinarski. Read by Kirby Heybourne and 8 others. Quill Tree Books, 2023. ISBN 9780063213098. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
It’s extra tough to make friends when you’re starting a new school in eighth grade. Anna is struggling both with this and with missing her grandmother, who’s back in Poland. When she sits down with the one girl who always eats lunch by herself and is told not to both by the girl and by other students, Anna wonders what could have happened – Rachel is pretty and smart and there’s no obvious reason that she should be so conspicuously left out. Against advice from her teacher and her older sister, Anna decides to use a school podcast assignment to research what happened to turn Rachel from a popular girl to a pariah. Along the way, she discovers a lot about herself, middle school dynamics, and the far-reaching effects of patriarchy and gender expectations on kids her age. Can one forbidden podcast make a difference? This one would pair well with Barbara Dee’s Maybe He Just Likes You.