About Middle Grade Carousel
Middle Grade Carousel is a book blog for readers which celebrates a love for Middle Grade fiction, bookish games, and finding connections in all sorts of places.
We host a variety of reading challenges and games to encourage readers to be adventurous, have fun, and always keep an eye out for interesting details. Some of our favorites include:
- Our month-long reading challenge gives you a theme to read along with.
- Read for the win with our Middle Grade Book Bingo cards! If you get stuck, CJ’s Bingo Squares blog series might help you find the right book for the job.
- Think you know your Middle Grade books? Try your eye with our Book Spotting game.
- Maybe spotting connections is more your skill! The I Spy series asks you to find what the Middle Grade books we’ve curated might have in common.
- Stick around for our annual Book A Day May reading challenge, in which we try to read 31 books during the month of May.
About Us
Middle Grade Carousel is run by CJ & Elza, a dynamic mother-daughter duo.
C. J. Milbrandt
CJ has always believed in miracles, especially small ones. A lifelong bookworm with a love for fairy tales, far-off lands, and fantasy worlds, she began spinning adventures of her own on the advice of a dear friend. Her family-friendly stories mingle humor and whimsy with a dash of danger and a touch of magic. Author of the award-winning Byways Books, in which three half-brothers take sibling rivalry to new lengths as they race each other across their homeland. [2016 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award, “Best Book Series – Chapter Books,” Bronze Medal]
CJ blogs her way through the bookshelf with reading challenges, bookish games, and star-studded spotlights on her website!
Elza Kinde
Elza Kinde is a creative blogger, word collector, Middle Grade reader, visual designer, lettering artist, and sunglasses hoarder. Elza believes an imagination is a wonderful thing to have, and should be cultivated through books & comics, arts & crafts, and trial & error.
Visit Elza’s blog for a veritable rainbow of bookish recommendations, quirky quotes, and words worth collecting!
Christa Kinde
Faith in a Father whose ways are mysterious. Hope in a Friend who’s coming again. Love that bears fruit in far-off places. Christa Kinde believes in bright colors, good manners, crazy socks, word games, cat naps, and postage stamps. But most of all, she believes in God. She writes about her faith with studies, stories, and devotionals that bring truth into focus and give faith a practical spin.
Christa will contribute occasional reviews of faith-based middlegrade stories. In her 4-volume Threshold Series [HarperCollins Christian, Zonderkidz], angels and demons clash over a quaint small town where not everyone is who—or what—they seem.
Middle Grade Carousel 