Revisiting these familiar favorites got me thinking—what would the adult fiction counterparts of my favorite middle grade novels be? The following list is comprised of five of my most treasured childhood books, and the novels they might be all grown up.
5 Middle Grade Favorites & Their Adult Fiction Counterparts
If you loved Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary, try:
If you loved Coraline by Neil Gaiman, try:
If you loved Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, try:
If you loved the Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene, try:
If you loved Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, try:
An older sister annoyed about being roped into said trouble? Check. It may not seem like it from title alone, but this story of an older sister, Korede, grappling with how far she’ll go to protect her younger sister, Ayoola, definitely gives me Beezus and Ramona vibes, albeit with much higher stakes and significantly more murder. Except why is she emaciated, with sallow skin and odd appetites? Much like Coraline, The Return includes a creepy old house with long & unsettling hallways, a loved one who isn’t quite who she seems, and an atmosphere eerie enough to keep me up all night. The Most Fun We Ever Had follows the Sorenson family, and their four wildly different daughters, from the 1970s to 2016. The sisters struggle with their relationships with one another, their parents, and themselves while the reader follows them into adulthood. Spending time watching the Sorenson sisters grow up was a reading experience I will not soon forget. Perveen Mistry is Bombay’s only female lawyer. In The Widows of Malabar Hill, Perveen is appointed to execute the will of a wealthy mill owner who has left three widows behind. Soon, she realizes something isn’t quite right. When her suspicions begin to rise about certain aspects of the will, she must investigate to ensure that the widows are not being taken advantage of. As the investigation heightens, and tensions rise to murder, Perveen takes on the responsibility of ensuring that no innocent women are in danger. Her Body and Other Parties kept me up all night as a grown woman. This collection of stories starts with a wonderfully creepy retelling of the classic spooky campfire story “The Green Ribbon,” in which a girl always wears a green ribbon around her neck and refuses to let even her husband know the reasoning behind it. In Machado’s retelling, The Husband Stitch, the narrator speaks directly to the reader in a way that is so claustrophobic and unsettling, I audibly gasped when reading it for the first time. This book is now a treasured favorite of mine. It lives permanently on my bedside table so that I can revisit my favorite stories in the dark anytime I please.
