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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Applebaum, Kirsty

The Middler

262 pp. | Holt | April, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-250-31733-9 $16.99
(2) 4-6 Maggie Cruise is a middle child, a "middler," not a special "eldest" like her brother Jed. In Fennis Wick, every eldest has an enjoyable life until they turn fourteen, when they have the "honor" of going to camp to train for the Quiet War. It's widely known that all good people send their eldests to camp, while those families that refuse become "wanderers" and are a threat to society. Eldests are heroes; eldests get all the attention; but when Maggie discovers a wanderer girl named Una near the town's boundary, she concocts a plan to be a hero, too, by turning Una and her father in to the authorities. The results of Maggie's plan are not what she expects, though, and in trying to make up for her mistakes, she learns that her home, the camp, and even the Quiet War are not at all what the people of Fennis Wick have been led to believe. Applebaum's suspenseful and inventive story has echoes of The Giver (rev. 7/93) and other dystopian classics; it avoids truly frightening scenes in favor of developing Maggie's own courage, character, and capacity for friendship. Moral quandaries and philosophical questions deepen this ­page-turner.
Reviewer: Sarah Berman | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2020

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