Want to read more middle grade horror? Start here! 2021 edition

• 03/10/2021
• Siobhan O'Brien Holmes
• no comments

Maybe you write horror for adults and want to dip your toe into the middle grade pool. Maybe you write realistic fiction for kids and want to try your hand at something spookier. Maybe you’ve never written anything but children’s horror is calling to you. Or maybe you’ve already written a scary middle grade but you’ve realised you just don’t know the market enough. Never fear! Here’s my introduction to finding recently published MG horror that everyone’s raving about.

Of course you can find middle grade horror books to read in a thousand places: the library, Amazon, recommendations from friends, browsing your local bookshop, reading reviews in publishing magazines. These are all excellent options and I encourage you to go do them, now! But if you’re feeling lost in a sea of titles and don’t know where to begin or what’s worth reading, this post is intended to point you in the right direction and get you started with the category. By hunting out books that have won or been nominated for genre awards, received buzz from specialist publications and blogs in the field or been chosen by libraries to actively promote to children, you can be fairly confident those titles have been popular and well received by those in the know.

☆ Summer Scares 2021 Middle Grade

Every year for National Library Lover’s Day, the Horror Writers Association, United for Libraries, Book Rio and Booklist come together to select their Summer Scares Reading List. These are titles selected by a panel of librarians and authors to promote horror to all ages. Here are their 2021 picks:

Ollie’s Odyssey by William Joyce

Whichwood by Tahereh Mafi

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods by Hal Johnson

☆ Ladies of Horror Fiction Award for Best Middle Grade 2021

The Ladies of Horror Fiction select a middle grade shortlist and winner each year and here are their six 2021 choices:

Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon (winner)

Crater Lake by Jennifer Killick (nominee)

Ghost Squad by Claribel A Ortega (nominee)

The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf (nominee)

The Stitchers by Lorien Lawrence (nominee)

Thirteens by Kate Alice Marshall (nominee)

☆ Bookshops’ and publishers’ top picks

Take a look at the middle grade bestsellers at the big book stores in your country or children’s publishers online. You might not be able to filter by middle grade AND horror but you could pick one category and scroll through the results for titles and covers that shout ‘horror’ at you. Alternatively, you can Google ‘bestselling children’s horror’ and you’ll find publishers’ top lists that way.

• Waterstones’ Children’s Horror and Ghost Stories
• Penguin’s Bestselling Children’s Horror
• Amazon’s list of popular children’s scary stories

☆ Where else can you look?

• The Spooky Middle Grade blog and YouTube channel are hosted by middle grade authors who know their stuff
• Book Riot posts a lot about horror including middle grade and YA so look out for articles like 13 Spooky Middle Grade Books for the Haunting Season (2020) and 8 Cozy Middle Grade Ghost Stories (2020)
• Goodreads will give you lists of the most read books in any genre and while their ratings don’t necessarily mean they’re brilliant books, it’s a really useful way of understanding what’s popular
• I love the Book Trust and they often post about children’s horror, giving a recommended reading age and tags to highlight themes, subgenres and trigger warnings.