Black Friday is at the end of the week. As writers I highly suggest we forget the newest gadgets and support other writers. Buy books! Give them as gifts. Buy them for yourself.

But BUY BOOKS!

If you need some suggestions, here are some great books that came out this year by my friends:

MIDDLE GRADE (ages 8-12):

The Nearly Honorable League of Pirates #2: Terror in the Southlands by Caroline Carlson

More pirates, more magic, and more adventure in the second book of the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates series! Caroline Carlson brings the unceasing wit, humor, and fun of the first book in the series, Magic Marks the Spot, to this epic sequel. Fans of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events and Trenton Lee Stewart’s Mysterious Benedict Society will love this quirky tween series and hope to join the VNHLP just like Hilary!

The Great Greene…

by Jennifer Arena

When I was an editor at Golden Books, I was lucky enough to work with many wonderful authors, but one who stood out for his good humor, his generosity, and his absolute joy in writing for kids was George Stanley. Around Golden, we had a nickname for him—Captain Hook, because, more than any other author we’d worked with, George had a knack for coming up with books with hooks, books that kids really and truly wanted to read based on the idea alone.

The first book I edited of George’s was Ghost Horse. It had a horse . . . who was a ghost! What’s cooler than that? The second book was Snake Camp, about a snake-phobic kid who accidentally gets sent to a camp for snake lovers. Both were brilliant, attention-grabbing ideas that kids were sure to like. (And they did!)

My boss and I…