Middle grade is a term that refers to books written for readers between the ages of eight and twelve. In this column, Erica will recommend great books for children in this age group!

Windswept by Margi Preus
Library Catalog: Print

Windswept is a story within a story, regaling the reader with a story fit for a fairy tale about the journey of a young girl in search of her lost siblings.

In a future of our world, when stories are banned, anyone under the age of fifteen is forbidden from going outside for fear of the wind sweeping them away. This is the fate that Tagalong’s sisters met – but now, Tagalong is offered the chance to go and find them.

Armed with nothing but an old book of fairytales and a bagful of hand-me-down clothes against the dangers of the outside world and the wind, she teams up with four other youngsters in search of their missing siblings. Their journey is long, and treacherous, but like the fairy tales Tagalong continues to read through their journey, there is always hope for a happy ending.

Written in the midst of the COVID quarantine, this is a book about the importance of perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, the value of stories and the spoken word, and a community united by and working for the common good – rather than one divided and distracted by greed.

Check out the book that Booklist called “an engaging adventure story,” the School Library Journal described as a “must-read grand adventure,” with “hypnotic writing,” and Kirkus Reviews declared an “inventive, memorable” read with “richly descriptive prose and delicate, atmospheric black-and-white illustrations.”