mg – WRITERS' RUMPUS

Three Books to Help You Outline Your Novel

March 20, 2020 Rebecca Moody

If you’re a novelist, whether you outline your books before you begin drafting or not, there comes a point where you have to be able

Middle Grade Book Review: The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury

December 20, 2019 Rebecca Moody

Budding young musician Amelia Jones has always had one goal: to be accepted into the Mystwick School of Musicraft, where her mother, who died when Amelia was young, was once a star flute player and maestro.

Finding the Beats: Plotting for Pantsers

October 29, 2019 Dana Nuenighoff

Do you ever get a book idea in your head but don’t know where it’s going? Do you find that you have a saggy middle?

MG Book Review: The Dark Lord Clementine by Sarah Jean Horwitz

September 3, 2019 Rebecca Moody

The Dark Lord Elithor’s daughter, Clementine, lives a lonely life in the Valley of the Seven Sisters—too evil—and, it must be said, too uppity—to fit

On the Wings of MG: To China and Indonesia

August 6, 2019 Lexi Donahue

This July, two middle grade books took me on a journey to new countries with beautiful and authentic description of setting. As Jennifer Baker said

The Missing Piece of Charlie O’Reilly Blog Tour

March 29, 2019 kirsticall

“Charlie did know that. He knew a lot of things: that his dad’s promotion at the museum of natural history meant a lot of trips

WHERE THE HEART IS by Jo Knowles: A Review by Two Rumpus Writers

March 19, 2019 kirsticall

“When you learn vocabulary words in school, you memorize the definition. And you have a good idea of what the words mean. But it’s not until you feel them that you really grasp the definition. I have known what the word ‘helpless’ means for a long time. And ‘desperate.’ But I’ve never felt them. Feeling them is different. They fill your chest with a horrible sense of ‘dread’ and ‘guilt’ and ‘despair.’ Those are more vocabulary words that you can’t fully understand until you feel them.”