I may be a grown adult, but I still love to read middle grade novels and then share them with others. There's just something special about that age group and level. Today, author C.W. Allen talks about her love for writing this genre as well as shares an excerpt from The Secret Benefits of Invisibility. Let the author know your thoughts in the comments section. Be sure to follow the tour for even more! Best of luck entering the giveaway!
Friendship and adventure are the name of the game in Friends to the End by C.L. Colyer. Read an excerpt from this middle grade action adventure book and then learn a bit more about the author in a special guest post. Follow the tour for more! Best of luck in the giveaway!
My bewildered gaze slithered from Dom to Josh, finally coming to a stop on Morgan as I tried to decide if they were crazy.
“If the house is invisible, how do you expect to find it?” I asked.
Morgan sat on the stoop next to me. “It’s not always invisible. My brothers saw it once. They said it’s a big house with a long porch. It vanished before they could set foot on the first step, and I’m glad, too.”
“Why? What would have happened if they were on the steps?” I asked. Not because I believed an old ghost story had any truth to it, but I was curious to know what she’d say.
Morgan had to pick her jaw up from the walkway before she could answer, and when she did her voice came out in a high-pitched squeak. “If they had been on the porch or worse—” she swallowed loudly “—inside, they would have disappeared with it.”
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When I was done, I emptied the bucket of debris into our large trashcan and I put up the nets. I headed to the kitchen for some of my mom’s iced tea. Addie was at the table drawing. She was always doing art. Ponies and puppies, bears and bunnies, that sort of thing. Lots of pinks and purples, sparkles and glitter. Girly stuff. Rainbows and sunsets. Boring stuff, if you ask me.
I reached into the fridge, poured myself a glass and took a big gulp. Ah, that felt good. I downed the full glass and then poured myself another one. As I sipped it I flipped through the newspaper my dad had left on the counter. Nothing caught my eye. Then I glanced over at what Addie was drawing. I bet she’s drawing a unicorn or something just as silly—
“Wait a minute! Addie! What are you drawing?” I said, shocked.
She quickly scooped up her papers and stuffed them into her sketchbook and closed the cover. Mighty suspicious.
“Nothing.” She grinned.
“That didn’t look like nothing.”
“Just drawing.“
“What were you doing?”
“Why do you care?” she said defensively.
“I want to know.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Oh, it is my business.” I glared at her. “It’s very much my business. In fact, I think you were actually drawing my business. Was that a swimming pool you were drawing?”
“No.” She cracked a smile. “I was just drawing water.”
I scowled.
“Water inside four walls!” I said, accusatorily. She started giggling. “In a backyard! With a diving board!” By now she was laughing uncontrollably.
“Let me see that!” I reached for her sketchbook. She pulled it away from me, but as she did that, a bunch of papers went flying into the air. And there it was. One of her drawings floated slowly down to the ground and when it landed I could see it, clear as day. Not just a swimming pool, but in bright orange big letters it said Pool Cleaning Service.
“Addison!” I shouted. “What are you doing?!”
“It’s called marketing,” she said in the voice of a grown-up, tired of explaining the same thing over and over again to a child.
“You don’t even know what that is!”
“Yes I do,” she huffed. “Dad told me what it means.”
“Oh yeah, well what is it?”
“I am making flyers to promote my pool cleaning business.”
“You don’t have a pool cleaning business!” I stomped my foot. “I do.”
“Not yet, I don’t, but I expect that soon I will.”
I looked down again at the flyer she had drawn. There was a phone number on it. I pointed to it.
“Mom said I could use her number,” she said.
I was about to tell her this whole thing was crazy, it would never work. But I was stopped short in my tracks. I do believe my jaw was open. I might have even been drooling, if you want to know the truth.
“Addie!” I gave her a big hug. “This is a great idea! That’s exactly what I need to find new customers.”
“But you don’t know how to draw.”
“Yes I do,” I said defensively.
“No, you don’t,” she smirked. “Even your stick figures don’t look like sticks, they look like nervous spaghetti.”
“You have a point. Maybe you can draw them for me.”
“No thanks,” she said and quickly picked up her papers and started to head out of the kitchen.
“Wait! Addie wait!”
“I’ll pay you.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. A dollar.”
“No way,”
“Two dollars?” I said hopefully.
She shook her head
“Three?”
“Half.”
“A half dollar?” I giggled. “Ok, sure.”
“No, I want half of everything you make cleaning pools.”
“What?!” I shrieked.
“That’s right, 50-50.”
“No way, not a chance! Get lost.”
“Ok,” she said in that you’re-going-to-regret-this tone of voice and started to walk away.
I swallowed. There was something stuck in my throat. Ok, you might even say it was pride. I swallowed my pride and called out, “Addie! Come back.”
“Yes, brother?” she teased.
“I’ll give you a third.”
She pretended to think about it, and then said, “No.”
“Forty percent.”
“No.”
“Forty! Addie, that’s a lot.”
“I don’t want forty, I want to be your partner. An equal partner.”
“My partner?” I said sarcastically.
“That’s right. Your partner.”
“But you don’t know anything about cleaning pools. And you’re too little to carry heavy buckets of wet leaves.”
“And you don’t know how to draw. And it sure doesn’t seem like you know much about marketing either.”
“You want me to give you half of my business just because you can draw flyers? That hardly seems fair. I can get anyone to draw pictures of a pool for me.”
“It’s not just drawing, Chance. It told you, it’s called marketing. I have Mom’s phone ready to go, so we can take calls. I made a map of the neighborhood so we can write down which houses we visited and left flyers with, and what they said. I’ll find us new customers, if you make me your partner.”
I scratched my head. There was something appealing about what she was proposing. It was no fun knocking on doors all day in the hot sun, hoping someone needed their pool cleaned. “Ok, ok. Maybe we can do half of any new customer you bring.”
“No,” she said. “I want to be a full partner in the whole business, or I’m not interested.”
Excerpted from Kidventure: Twelve Weeks to Midnight Blue by Steve Searfoss, Copyright © 2022 by Steve Searfoss. Published by Steve Searfoss.
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It's time to go on a mystery adventure! Check out this excerpt from Relatively Normal Secrets by C.W. Allen to get a sneak peek inside before you get your own copy. Check out the rest of the tour, too, for even more and be sure to let the author know your thoughts along the way. Best of luck entering the giveaway!
Their father was fond of saying the dog had not managed to learn anything in the years that followed, but that was not strictly true. While it was true that she did not come when called or sit on command, the dog had in fact learned many tricks. Nyx had learned quite early on, for example, how to help herself to the contents of the refrigerator. No one was quite sure how an animal without thumbs was capable of opening a refrigerator door, since she had never been caught in the act, but an entire ham doesn’t simply get up and go for a stroll during the night, now does it?
Zed imagined some people would consider it normal to take a dog along to run errands—as long as the dog could fit comfortably inside a purse, that is, or at the very least wait patiently in the car. But Nyx was neither tiny, nor well-behaved and patient. She was, in fact, huge. Her bristly black fur and legs that seemed much too long for the rest of her frame made her look like a gigantic hairy spider. His mother spent nearly every moment in the dog’s company, and whenever she needed to go inside the grocery store, or post office, or other location where dogs are generally unwelcome, she brought Nyx along to wait in the car for her return. Nyx made use of this time by bouncing anxiously from seat to seat, smearing her nose on the windows.
It's time for another installment of my current favorite middle grade series, Sophie Washington by Tonya Duncan Ellis! This one, Class Retreat, is full of fun and some subtle lessons and discussion topics for kids. Check out an excerpt and further thoughts of mine. Let Tonya know in the comments what you think. And then be sure to follow the tour and enter the great giveaway!
HARRY was dreaming that a cat fell out of the sky and landed on his head.
He woke at once. It was dark inside his kennel. He was uncertain if it was very late or very early, but he was wide awake and puzzled about the cat in his dream.
Cats were unheard of in Dog Town. The way summers without mosquitoes were unheard of. Or non-fattening chocolate bars were unheard of.
Baffled, Harry tried thinking about something else. Instead, he became consumed by visions of cats. As he struggled to find meaning behind his odd dream, he became convinced it meant something horrible for dog-kind.
The blanket at his feet offered a good place to avoid thinking on his dream any further. He hid under the blanket, until the heat of the summer’s night made it hot enough to cook a roast.
Harry pushed his nose outside his kennel. It was hot and humid tonight, and there wasn’t a breath of wind. Vastly different to that afternoon when the wind’s temper had set every door in the house banging.
Even though it was too hot inside his kennel, he didn’t want to leave it. Outside in his backyard, shadows skipped across the treetops. Shadows that didn’t belong to the moon or to the wind.
Sharing a hotel with a mafia boss – even if he was a little old man – didn’t make me feel safe and warm inside. I could feel my stomach doing somersaults while we waited for the elevator. I wondered if Charlie was nervous too. He wouldn’t admit it, even if he were.
Eventually there was a ping and the doors of the elevator opened. It was empty. That was good. Well, it was good as long as no mafia guys got in before we got out.
“I think I’ll do fifty laps,” said Charlie, after the elevator doors closed.
“What about Marco Polo? I want to say we played Marco Polo in Italy.”
He looked at me like I was stupid. “Marco Polo came from Venice; Italy wasn’t a country back then.”
Trust him to turn something fun into a history lesson. “Yeah, whatever.”
The doors of the elevator opened and we followed the signs to the pool. It was an indoor pool, there were three lanes and it was probably about fifteen metres long – long enough for races. I knew as soon as I saw it that Charlie would want to race.
At first I didn’t see anyone in the pool, but then I noticed a figure push off from the edge. Geez, I wanted to have the whole pool to ourselves. Then I saw two men in black suits sitting at the side of the pool. The bad feeling in my gut came back. At first I didn’t recognize them because they weren’t wearing sunglasses. One of them got up and came over to us as Charlie and me were stripping down to our swimmers. I could barely take off my shorts, I was shaking so much.
The man in black was tall and he had big shoulders. He said something to us in Italian.
Charlie said, “Parla inglese?”
I knew that meant, Do you speak English? I hadn’t worked out how Charlie could say four English words in only two Italian words.
“Come back to swim later,” ordered the man in black.
“Sure,” I said and began to put my shorts back on. I wasn’t stupid. I knew from school that if someone three times bigger told me to do something, it was best to do it.
“We’re staying at the hotel. We’re allowed to use the pool.” Charlie folded his arms.
Was he crazy? “We can go back to our room and watch the wrestling,” I said to him. “Let’s go.”
The man in black leaned toward Charlie and said very softly, “Mr. Petruzzelli owns hotel.”
Mr. P must’ve been Mr. Mafia in the pool. That was good enough for me. I was out of here. If Charlie wanted to stay and get his head blown off, that was his business. Real casual, I began to walk back toward the elevator.
I heard a voice behind me. “Boy! You stop!”
