Speechless

Written by: Aron Nels Steinke

First line: Mira? Mira, is everything OK?

Why you should read this book: Mira suffers from selective mutism: she has no trouble expressing herself at home--she spends hours creating original animations and uploading them to the internet--but she's never been able to speak out loud in school. It doesn't help that her former best friend Chloe has become her biggest bully and is also living in her house and kissing up to her mom. But Mira manages to make one friend who's willing to work around her disabilities, and a new therapist who sees her and understands what she's going through, and suddenly she's expressing herself all over the place. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You think children should be seen and not heard. 

Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

Written by: Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, and Beata Ernman

First line: This could have been my story.

Why you should read this book: Svante and Malena, loving and successful Swedish musicians, understood what it was like to be a little different, but when their two daughters, Greta and Beata, both began exhibiting difficulty moving through the world, they had to stretch their understanding to find ways to accommodate neurodiverse kids in an unaccommodating world. While Beata suffered debilitating intolerance to noise, Greta became increasingly despondent over climate change and the fact that the people who should be doing something about it were not. Of course, at the age of fifteen, Greta's "student strike" outside Parliament turns her into one of the most well-known climate activists and inspires countless young people to join her cause. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's very difficult, emotionally speaking: a lot of the book is about how much Greta and Beata suffer before their parents are able to figure out how to keep their sensitive children healthy, and the rest of it is basically about the very dire situation threatening all life on planet Earth right now. 

The Whole Story of Half a Girl

Written by: Veera Hianandani

First line: I'm in school, sitting with my hair hanging long down the back of my chair, my arm around my best friend, Sam.

Why you should read this book: Sonia's father is Indian and her mother is Jewish, but until her dad lost his job and she had to transfer from her fun, hippie school to a public school, she never even thought about her ethnic identity, let alone questions of class and who to sit with at lunch. Now she's torn between the popular cheerleaders who don't understand her, and the kids who might understand her but aren't cool, while mourning the loss of her old relationships. And all this becomes meaningless when her father's mental health becomes the focus of her entire life. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: For a middle grade novel, it tackles numerous difficult issues.