A PLACE FOR MIDDLE

Younger readers unsatisfied with the rather evasive answer offered to a middle child in Barbara Shook Hazen’s Who’s Your Favorite Monster, Mama?, illustrated by Maryann Kovalski (2006), may be happier with this take on the topic, though their bookend siblings probably won’t. Feeling trapped in the middle—“Not useful here. Not useful there. No use for a Middle like me”—the narrator sets out from its clan of hairy, toothy, Ed Koren–like creatures to find its place. Having observed along the way that a sandwich without a middle is no lunch, and a bridge sans middle no bridge, the wanderer regains a sense of belonging by being rescued, taken home, plumped back down in its accustomed mid-sized chair and assured by everyone that “Without a Middle we’re no family at all.” Iffy as this idea might be, it carries a big dose of reassurance, and there’s a logic to the lunch and bridge bits that fretful human Middles might accept. (Picture book. 6-8)