If you're new here, why not subscribe to our email updates or follow us on Facebook? You can also add us to your Google Reader. Thanks for visiting! I once worked with someone who rather reminded me of a tragic pelican. He had this strange, gulping way of speaking, almost as though his words were fish that he was trying to choke down, and these sad, sad eyes...

Medicine might go down with the help of a spoonful of sugar, but Mary Poppins herself would surely agree that middle grade fiction is a sweet enough medicine in its own right. Its the genre I reach for whenever Im feeling a little down or disillusioned; my fictional heart home. Its a genre where its okay to be cheerful and upbeat,...

  The other night I attended a Christmas dinner for fourteen people, only a handful of whom actually knew each other. We all know how these events play out: awkward introductions where people try to define their lives as concisely as possible so as not to bore the others, and yet verbosely enough that they might find something, anything in common so that...

Juggling three items at once isnt such a bit deal, according to Sullivan Mintz, but four? Thats something.'The Boy in the Box: Master Melvilles Medicine Show is the most recent outing from best-selling middle grade author Cary Fagan, and like its juggling protagonist Sullivan, it finds itself with plenty of balls in the air. The thing is...

Alone again, Meg undid the strings of the bag that dangled from a rope belt at her waist, hidden by the long apron she wore over her plain dress. Inside the bag were her dolls figures, she called them. She took them out and sat them on the edge of the gravestone. There was Dilly-Lal, with her fixed smile, Drum-a-Dum with his sticks...

In my opinion you arent a total waste of time, says the towns visiting Bard to eleven-year-old Jack. Dont let that go to your head, boy. You could easily be a'partial waste of time. Howd you like to be my apprentice? Theres nothing like a glowing appraisal from ones teacher to set one on the...