9 Cheerful Middle Grade Books That Aren’t Sad or Scary

The Magnificent Mya Tibbs: Spirit Week Showdown, by Crystal Allen
This is a great pick for 9 and 10 year olds who enjoy stories about ordinary school life. Texas fourth-grader Mya can’t wait for Spirit Week at school and the Fall Festival, with its guest star cowboy or cowgirl. Mya and her best friend, Naomi, the super cool girl in her grade, plan to be Spirit Week partners and win the prize of VIP tickets to the fair. But the partner picking goes wrong. Mya ends up with “Mean Connie” and Naomi becomes angry and back-stabbing. Happily Mya learns that Connie isn’t actually mean, and is a much better friend than Naomi. And for lasso-twirling, cow-girl wanna-be Mya, the Festival turns out to be the best one ever, even without VIP tickets. Although Mya learns not to trust gossip, this isn’t a preachy book—it’s good fun, and full of great characters.

From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess, by Meg Cabot
I enjoy Meg Cabot’s middle grade princess series, which begins with From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess, and continues with Royal Wedding Disaster. Olivia, ordinary kid turned Princess of Genovia, is in Europe helping her royal family plan her sister Mia’s wedding. To her dismay, her grandmother enrolls her at the local school for nobility and royals (Genovia is that sort of country), and Olivia’s life becomes even busier with school drama added to the wedding-planning. The story, full of amusing and lightly suspenseful details of life at school among nobility of many lands and the planning for Mia’s wedding, is an entertaining escape from reality. Even the obligatory mean girl at school can’t turn Olivia’s life, or the wedding, into a disaster.

The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher, by Dana Alison Levy
I highly recommend The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher, by Dana Levy, and its sequel, The Family Fletcher Takes Rock Island, to fans of family stories. Four very different boys, adopted by two dads, juggle the business of ordinary busy family life and take on a few more significant challenges along the way. The second book has a more focused plot, pitting the four kids and new young friends against a threat to their beloved lighthouse, but both books are as funny and warm and friendly as all get out. Sometimes the four brothers get on each other’s nerves (and the nerves of the grownups around them), but they pull together when it matters, and their parents always have their backs.

All Four Stars, by Tara Dairman
Gladys, the heroine of All Four Stars, by Tara Dairman, and its sequel, The Stars of Summer, has a passion for food.  Thwarted by her parents’ take-out habits, she experiments on her own…which goes horribly wrong when she tries to make Crème Brule with a blow torch. Almost burning the house gets Gladys banned from the kitchen, but with help from friends and her new teacher, and a bit of good luck (like her choice of pink stationary) she becomes a freelance food reviewer for New York’s biggest paper. It’s tough to secretly visit restaurants when you’re a kid in the suburbs, and even more challenging when you’re stuck at summer camp. But Gladys pulls it off, strengthens her friendships (including one with the “it” girl of her grade, who becomes a foodie ally), and all ends happily. Gladys is a heroine to cheer for as she rises to both social and culinary challenges. The third book, Stars So Sweet, comes out July 19th, and it looks just as tasty as the first two.

Slacker, by Gordon Korman
Slacker is a really fun one. The titular slacker, Cam, has devoted his life to computer games, and he plans to spend the next few months training for his first big tournament. But when his obsession ends up almost burning down the house, his parents insist that he expand his interests. So he starts a new school club, The Positive Action Group, by simply creating a page on the school website. He assumes no one will notice it, and even if they do, they won’t want to join, but he is very wrong. It snowballs, and soon 200 + kids are out doing good works, and finding it much more satisfying than they’d anticipated. By the end, even Cam, though he’d still rather be playing games, has started to think about real life in a more mature, empathetic way. Gordon Korman has a real knack for creating secondary characters who are amusing, three-dimensional individuals, and that gift is in full force here. It is one of the most entertaining books I’ve read all year, and Not Sad at all! (No one, including a beaver who plays an important role, dies, though the beaver has a narrow escape….).

The Whatever After series, by Sarah Mlynowski
Moving on to fantasy, Sarah Mlynowski’s Whatever After books are great for fans of fairy tale fun. Abby and her little brother, Jonah, have a magic mirror that takes them into fairy tale worlds, where they can change the stories (a tricky business…). The latest book, Genie in a Bottle, takes them into the story of Aladdin.  Knowing that there’s a wish-granting genie, they think they might have found a way to free the fairy trapped in their magic mirror. But they also have to make sure Aladdin’s story works out as it should, navigating caves full of treasure, helping an inexperienced young genie figure out how to make her  wish granting work, traveling on a flying carpet that can only get a few feet off the ground, and organizing Aladdin’s street kid friends into a parade fit for royalty. These books are fun and funny, with enough hints of more serious questions thrown in to make them more than just fluff. And a bonus about a good series like this (Book 10, Sugar and Spice, about Hansel and Gretel, comes out in November) is that it will keep your kid going for a nice long while.

A Tangle of Knots, by Lisa Graff
A Tangle of Knots and its recently released sequel A Clatter of Jars are set in a world much like ours, except that a high percentage of people have magical gifts. Orphaned Cady, for instance, can tell just by looking at people the cake they would like most (and she has the baking gifts to deliver it). The head of the orphanage magically identifies the right parents for every kid…and finally, the right father for Cady arrives. Her life is tangled with a long-lost suitcase and the man searching for it, an unpleasant talent thief (alarming, but not horrible), and many other bits of story told from multiple viewpoints that turn out to be connected. Many of the characters from a Tangle of Knots appear again at the summer camp that’s the setting for A Clatter of Jars. There are lots of stories going on here too, from the points of view of the young campers (and the camp director, who’s bottling talents to sell on the black market), each of whom is dealing with their own personal conflicts and dreams. There are stressful moments, but the villain isn’t a bad person, and the magic, vivid, complicated, and fun to think about, isn’t scary.

Unidentified Suburban Object, by Mike Jung
Unidentified Suburban Object is set in our world, and at first it seems like realistic middle grade fiction. Chloe is dealing with being the only Asian kid in a small Middle American town, and she wants to explore her Korean heritage, despite her parents’ totally unforthcoming attitude toward sharing anything about it with her. Pretty normal…but then, a plot twist happens! Science fiction enters the picture, and Chloe finds out family secrets that she could never have guessed. The twist is weird as heck, more than a bit amusing, and rather mind-blowing, but not scary. Give this one to fans of realistic fiction who enjoy having reality turned firmly upside down.

Greenglass House, by Kate Milford
Another one that seems at first to be realistic is Greenglass House (a slightly older one I love, with a sequel coming in 2017).  Greenglass House is an inn perched above a town that’s a haven for smugglers. It’s Christmas vacation, and Milo, whose parents own the inn, is looking forward to a peaceful time with no visitors. Than an assortment of guests make their way through the snowy night. Each one thought they would be the only guest. Each one has a secret. Each secret has a connection to the history of the house…and one secret is deadly. As the snow keeps falling, the guests share stories, adding pieces to the single puzzle that has brought them together. And Milo, with the help of Meddie, a girl his own age who’s shown up along with the extra helpers from town, is determined to put the puzzle together. He finds there were things about his home he had never dreamt of. Including a ghost. But not a scary ghost, not at all.