We’ve come to the end of Book A Day May! CJ & Elza are here to share their final week of progress as we close out another fun year of daily reading and bookish shenanigans.
Continue reading “#BookADayMay Reading Report”Tag: CJMK
#BookADayMay Reading Report
We’ve had another wonderful week of reading for our Book A Day May reading challenge. CJ & Elza are here to share their second week’s worth of books.
Continue reading “#BookADayMay Reading Report”#BookADayMay Reading Report
We’ve had another wonderful week of reading for our Book A Day May reading challenge. CJ & Elza are here to share their second week’s worth of books.
Continue reading “#BookADayMay Reading Report”#BookADayMay Reading Report
We’re through our first week of Book A Day May! Have you been keeping up so far? CJ & Elza are ready to report in with their most recent reads.
Continue reading “#BookADayMay Reading Report”#BookADayMay
Check out CJ’s final #BookADayMay list!
Who I Am (in book titles)
If there’s one thing that we love here at Middle Grade Carousel, it’s a game! Upon spying a challenge issued by Christie Megill on Twitter, we flew to our home library with an eye toward book titles that say something about our personalities. Here’s what we found.
CJ’s Stack

- Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
- Bliss by Kathryn Littlewood
- The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann
- Savvy by Ingrid Law
- The Exact Location of Home by Kate Messner
- The Honest Truth by Dan Geminhart
Find more from CJ on her blog!
Elza’s Stack

- The Problim Children by Natalie Lloyd
- A Taste for Monsters by Matthew J. Kirby
- All the Colors of Magic by Valija Zinck
- I Am Pusheen the Cat by Claire Belton
- “Shouldn’t You be in School?” by Lemony Snicket
- Magic or Not? by Edward Eager
Follow Elza for more Middle Grade fun!
Can you find book titles that describe you in some way?
Book Spine Poetry
Elza has been hosting #NewYearsReads2021, a series of challenges and games on social media designed to kick off the new year of reading. The photo challenge prompt for today was “Book Spine Poetry”.
CJ decided to give it a whirl with books from our Middle Grade shelves. Here’s what she came up with!
The honest truth:
parked
trapped
every day
waiting for normal
nothing ever happens here
estranged grump
the gauntlet in real life
absolutely normal chaos
tut-tut
anyway
restart!
drumroll, please
The crossroads
fearless
wish
bloom
sweep
smile
wonder
bliss
Some kind of courage
A crooked kind of perfect
Ambush the wish
Hatching magic
Writing magic
the color of my words
charmed life
sunny side up
wizard at work
things that are absolutely truly
extraordinary
Check out #NewYearsReads2021 and share your own adventures with book spine poetry!
Follow CJ’s blog for more Middle Grade fun!
CJ: New Year – New Reading Goal
Check out how CJ plans to read in the new year!
Doing it Different. This year, I’m switching up how I choose the books I’ll read. I’m a big fan of reading challenges, and I regularly participate in three:
- A to Z Challenge (Great Middle Grade Reads)
- Series Challenge (Great Middle Grade Reads)
- Reading Bingo Boards (Middle Grade Carousel)
The only problem is that I’m always choosing books because they fit the challenge. And waiting to read many books I’m eager for … until they fit a challenge. I’m tired of putting them off! So this year, I decided to scan my shelves and compile a list of 100 Middle Grade Books that I will (finally) read in 2021. Many are recent releases. Some are part of a series or trilogy I started. And all of them are books I can’t wait to pick up!
Since many of these books are long(ish), I set my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal much…
View original post 111 more words
Best Reads of 2019
Hello from behind the scenes! We’re CJ and Elza, the mother-daughter duo responsible for Middle Grade Carousel’s challenges and content. As you may have guessed, we’re both avid bookworms who enjoy stocking our home library with kid-friendly reading material.
We’re so excited to show and tell and share what we’ve been reading, so you might be seeing more of us this year.
To kick off our brand new blogging schedule, we’ve decided to pick and share the Top 5 best books we read in 2019.