 March is often known as Middle Grade March here on Booktube because we love alliteration around here, and I wanted to share some of my favourite Australian middle grade verse novels with you because they are a lot of fun to read. If you're not familiar, a verse novel is a novel that is told entirely in prose rather than a straight narrative format, so it's like reading a story in poetry form. I have five books to recommend to you today. They're all by Australian authors. There are two books by the same author on this list as well just because they're books that I'm familiar with, and I'm always on the lookout for more of them. The first book that I want to mention is my most recent verse novel, Read. This is What's Now Knows by Catherine Apel, and this has recently been listed as a notable book for the Children's Book Council Awards of Australia 2023, and I found it in my school library, and so I thought I would borrow it and read it because why not? So this story is set in Australia. It is a middle grade verse novel about Lucy who lives with her dad there on their own, and they live in a caravan park. At the very beginning of this story, Lucy has just started second grade. She's at a brand new school, and every year she's moved to a different school, so they've travelled around a lot, but Lucy really wants to just sort of settle down. She finally has a friend in her class. Her teacher is fantastic. They're doing a really great inquiry project, and she doesn't want to move anymore, but she also knows that moving is something that her dad does, and she doesn't quite understand why they don't see their family anymore, and she is trying to make sense of all of that, while still trying to desperately carve out a place for herself. They're a family who doesn't have much. They sit sort of on the lower socioeconomic scale, and Lucy's father is just absolutely devoted to her. He wants to do right by her all of the time, but is kind of stuck, and this book is about friendship. It is about accepting help when you need it, and building a small community around you of people who really do want to help you. It's absolutely gorgeous. The reason that Snail is in the title is because Lucy has a pet snail. It's kind of her constant companion that she looks after, and she's very well versed in snail facts. The whole story was absolutely gorgeous and just very poignant. I was reading the author's note, and I believe Catherine Aple either is or was a teacher, and she mentioned that she had had a student like Lucy, and I think many teachers over the course of their careers have students like Lucy who pop into their lives and maybe disappear also at some point because of family circumstances, and how those students can really bring a lot to class and to experiences, but how they also sometimes struggle, and you have to find ways to engage them. So absolutely gorgeous book. Then there is The Little Wave by Pip Harry, which I do have a copy of somewhere, but I couldn't find it, and this is a middle grade first novel also set in Australia this time in New South Wales, and we have the perspectives of three different characters. The basic premise of the story is that a city school is trying to find a way to bring out a class of students from a country school to the city so that they can go to the beach because these country kids have never seen the ocean, and so they're sort of riding back and forth and fundraising and all of that sort of thing. Now three characters are Noah who just loves to surf and is sort of the font of all knowledge for that. You have Lottie who loves to collect facts about bugs, but is struggling with the fact that her father has a hoarding disorder, and she begins to develop a friendship with Noah in this story, and then you have Jack who has great big plans of becoming a quicker player. He lives in the country, he's never seen the ocean before, and he's desperate to come on this trip, but he also has to look after his sister and help out around the house, and so these three kids connect and become friends and develop this really great relationship in this first novel, and it is absolutely wonderful to read. Another novel by Pip Harry is Are You There Buddha, and this is probably for a slightly older middle grade audience. Our main character B is just starting high school, so she's 12 or 13 years old, and she's going through all of those changes that kids do around that time, so she's getting her period for the first time, she's having to make friends, she's a swimmer, and so she's constantly training and trying to get into the swimming teams. Her mother is absent and she has a stepmother who is trying to make a connection with her, and B is still kind of dealing with some of the resentment of her mother being gone and having a stepmother and working through those feelings and building that connection with her stepmother, and it was just a really lovely coming of age story, very relatable for Australians because we see our schools and our experiences represented on page, and I think that's really important, but yes, beautifully told in verse. Then there is The Way of the Dog by Zana Freiland, and Zana Freiland does some absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous books, and this first novel is told from the perspective of this scruffy pup who's raised on a puppy farm but eventually escapes with the help of the young boy who lives on this farm, but then they're separated and Dog has to try and make his way in the world while still trying to find his human because Dog knows that something bad has happened to the human but he doesn't know what and he doesn't know how to help, and so it's this big long journey of him finding this young boy and then them reconnecting at the end of the story. It is poignant and heartfelt and at times heartbreaking but beautifully beautifully written. And then finally I have Leave Taking by Lorraine Marwood, which was a shortlisted book in the CPCA Awards but also won the New South Wales Premiers Literary Awards. This is an absolutely beautiful book. It is about Toby and his parents who are leaving their farm that their family has owned for two generations and they're leaving after the death of Toby's younger sister. Throughout this book there's sort of one like one week left and they're packing up, they're sorting through all of their things and on the very last day Toby goes through and has his final goodbyes with all of the special places and things on the farm. That had a special meaning to him and to his younger sister Leah and despite sort of the really tragic circumstances that see this family leaving there is a really positive light to this book about how saying goodbye and how having that closure can be really freeing and can help people to move on and while we're dealing with grief and loss that closure is really really important and that idea of Leave Taking of being able to let things go is just absolutely beautifully done in this book. So those are some middle grade verse novels in the comments. I would love to know if you have other recommendations for children's verse novels that you have enjoyed in the past. Obviously I am very very familiar with Australian verse novels so I'm always on the lookout for things that are published overseas so feel free to leave any recommendations down below. If you want to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a snail emoji down below otherwise I hope that we're over here on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching, bye everyone.