The best book I read in June (2020)

[C.J.]

Summer reading challenges have always been something of a family tradition. My adult daughter and I still keep it up using the summer bingo boards at Middle Grade Carousel. What are your summer reading goals?

It's time to chime in with recommendations based on our reading for June. What were your favorite middle grade titles last month? My personal favorite was Short by Holly Goldberg Sloan (author of Counting by 7s), in which a girl takes part in her community's summer production of The Wizard of Oz. I also smiled my way through Ungifted by Gordon Korman, in which a habitual troublemaker is mistakenly enrolled in a school for geniuses. Also notable was Wonder at the Edge of the World by Nicole Helget, which was eerily appropriate, since the opening chapters involve a small town divided by racial issues (1800s edition).

Incidentally, I read all three of these books because they fit my June Bingo Board. : )

[Harley]

I read again one of my favorites The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester. The best of my new reads was The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen. The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street by Lindsay Currie was also great.

[Rebecca]

I started in on the nomination list for our July read. I thought both The Other Half of My Heart and Ghost were very good.

[Melanie]

The Usual Suspects by Maurice Broaddus

[Manybooks]

The best book I read in June has definitely been the 1943 Newbery Award winner Adam of the Road. I loved the sense of realistic Mediaeval sense of time and place and thought that both writing style and content totally took me into the Middle Ages. And really, so many more modern historical fiction novels seem to just not get the Middle Ages right in my opinion, often leaving me with a sense of current vernacular superimposed onto the past, whereas in Adam of the Road, Elizabeth Janet Gray has managed to avoid this.

[Manybooks]

Another novel (a total surprise find, from 2005, but feeling delightfully old fashioned) I really enjoyed has been The Vanishing Point by Susan Bonners. Not much happens, and there are some rather long explanations about art (which I for one really enjoyed) but first and foremost, The Vanishing Point is wholesome and fun summer vacation story, with mild adventures and also a fun mystery about who the artist of a certain painting was (and the surprise that both the artist and the painting are rather well known).

[Kate]

I started in June but finished today.... other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga. A stunning middle grade debut. You will want to read it!

[Critter]

I read City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab and Aru Shah and the Song of Death by Roshani Chokshi and thought both were excellent.

[Justine]

I read a few books in June and the best one was A Picture of Freedom: The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl, Belmont Plantation, Virginia 1859, which in a way is a good lead up to this month's read.

[Harley]

Critter wrote: "I read City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab and Aru Shah and the Song of Death by Roshani Chokshi and thought both were excellent."

I read City of Ghosts last November. It's a great book.

[Carmel]

The best book I read in June was Lark by Anthony McGowan - very worthy winner of 2020 Carnegie Medal.

[Leone]

From the list of black authors I chose Rita Wiliams-Garcia's "One Crazy Summer" - the best book I read in June. The author portrays what goes on in a Black Panther's summer camp in a very understanding light, as experienced by 11-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters.

[Becky]

It was a tie for me between Tuesdays at the Castle and Malamander, but it's hard not mention Circus Mirandus as well. All three were fun reads.

[Rebecca]

I loved Tuesdays at the Castle, when I read it several years ago. I haven't read the other two so I will have to take a look!