![]() ![]() A plane in a holding pattern is nothing to write home about in real life, but as an opening to a novel? Something’s about to go wrong. ![]() It contains the level of detail of a Michael Crichton novel. Honestly, this opening feels no different from the opening to an adult thriller. The British Airways Airbus A318 had been kept in a holding pattern before it landed at Heathrow. The first sentence tells us: This is a middle grade horror. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimanĭisembodied hands are a horror trope. There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. And the main character’s name is Coraline. It is also a moving house story, and grounds us in time: The move has just happened. When Gaiman introduces us to the door in the first sentence he tells us this will be a portal fantasy. We spend our entire childhoods learning not to lie, then, suddenly, we must all absorb the reality that a certain amount of lying is necessary, actually.Ĭoraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house. Lying is also a huge theme in middle grade fiction, but more than average in this particular book. Fictional characters mature a lot between the ages of twelve and thirteen. Many middle grade books are about twelve-year-olds, as this is widely considered the liminal age between childhood and adulthood. The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie. How do contemporary storytellers hook young readers? Let’s take a look at openings to various middle grade novels. ![]()
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