5 All-Star Dads of Middle Grade

A Crooked Kind of Perfect, by Linda Urban
If you ask ten-year-old Zoe Elias if her father is an all-star, her reaction might be mixed. She dreams of playing the grand piano at Carnegie Hall, and her father brings home a pipe organ. Unlike regular fathers, he doesn’t have an actual job, instead racking up online diplomas from Living Room University. And worst of all, he gets anxiety attacks every time he leaves the front yard. But despite everything, Zoe and her father have a special relationship. With a workaholic mother, Zoe and her father are often on their own. She helps him with his classes, and he encourages her to embrace her newfound talent for the organ. He may not be the easiest person to live with, but as it turns out, when push comes to shove, her Dad has Zoe’s back in a big way.

The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander
This 2015 Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Honor Award winner centers around twins Josh and JB Bell. The brothers dominate their middle school basketball court, in the school where their mother is assistant principal. And their greatest cheerleader at every game is their father, Chuck, who knows basketball better than just about anybody else. He’s a former NBA player, after all. Best friends on and off the court, Josh and JB have what seems like a picture-perfect life. But that life begins to unravel over a new girlfriend, a bet, and a box of secrets. Things go from bad to worse, then seem to be looking up, but life is full of surprises, and so is this book. It’s a story about brothers, fathers and sons, basketball, and the strong passion that binds it all together.

Chomp, by Carl Hiassen
Meet Wahoo Cray, son of animal wrangler Mickey Cray. After an iguana falls on Mickey’s head, leaving him with a concussion, the Cray family finds themselves in some tough financial times. Mickey’s mom takes a long-term job overseas, leaving Wahoo and Mickey to hold down the fort in their South Florida home. In an effort to pay the bills, Mickey agrees to help with the filming of the reality tv show Expedition Survival, despite his continued migraines and double vision, but it quickly becomes clear that the show’s star, Derek Badger, is a fake. Suddenly, Mickey, Cray, and Cray’s friend Tuna find themselves fighting to survive in the Everglades. When all else fails, it’s a father’s love for his son that saves the day. Though it contains some serious themes, Chomp is a life-or-death adventure story with humorous overtones that keep it from being too heavy.

Al Capone Does My Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko
This book (as well as the other two in the series, Al Capone Shines My Shoes and Al Capone Does My Homework) feature 12-year-old Moose Flanagan, who has just been relocated to Alcatraz where his father has taken a job as a prison warden. Move your family to a floating 12 acre piece of rock? Rub elbows with convicts? Uproot your son, autistic daughter, and prim and proper wife from their normal lives? What kind of father does that? It may seem like an odd decision. But jobs are few and far between in 1935, and sometimes you have to take what you can get. Mr. Flanagan’s your all-star family man: the kind of dad who plays catch with his son, tolerates his daughter’s obsessions and angry outbursts with calm, and soothes his wife’s frazzled nerves. Besides, as Moose soon learns, there are perks to living on a floating prison. Like Al Capone doing your laundry.

Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
This really doesn’t need much explanation, does it? How many of us grew up wanting Pa Ingalls in our lives, even if we already had perfectly wonderful fathers ourselves? Pa, with his fiddle-playing ways, his solutions to all of life’s problems, his compassion when the dog dies, his care for his daughter when she went blind, his treacherous hike through dangerous blizzards in order to come home for his family. I mean, let’s face, it was one thing after another for the Ingalls family. There was always some new tear-jerking tragedy, some crop failure, some devastating illness. But Pa was also always there with a tune, a hug, and a word or two of wisdom to get us (I mean, his family) beyond the heartbreak. Thank you, Pa, for being a part of our childhoods, and now our children’s childhoods.
Who are your favorite all-star middle grade dads?