A quick MMGM post this week because I (and the lovely Shannon W Messenger) are both busy running around ALA12 like lunatics. This week I’d like to highlight a series Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan.
Ranger’s Apprentice is part George RR Martin, part Tamora Pierce, Part Nancy Farmer. It’s a series of dramatic adventures involving a Ranger, Halt and his maturing apprentice, Will. This is one of those fantasy series that doesn’t rely on too much fantasy. Most of it is just straight out action adventure. There are sword fights and battles, kings and princesses, invaders, kidnappers, plenty of wilderness survival and a range of fascinating invented cultures, most of which are recognized as being derived from real historical groups – Vikings, Gauls, Arabs etc. These are more challenging books for confident readers, but have little content (apart from medieval style violence) that would be unsuitable for readers as young as 10. They range in length from from about 70,000 to over 100,000 words and have readers levels of about grade 6.
There are eleven books in the series, and John Flanagan now has a companion series called The Brotherband Chronicles, set in the same imagined world. There are many things to recommend John Flanagan’s books not the least of which is that they all have awesome covers. Check it out:
For this week’s I can’t wait to read I’m going with something I hope to find an ARC of here at ALA12, My Own Revolution by Carolyn Marsden. While this might be a slightly more mature Middle Grade book, or even YA, it concerns life under soviet communism, which is an area of literature for young people I feel is seriously lacking. I just purchased Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys (and no, I didn’t buy it by accident) which covers similar themes so I thought this would be a nice pairing. My Own Revolution comes out October 9th, 2012.
More MMGM Madness can be found here:
- Joanne Fritz @ My Brain on Books
- Sherrie Petersen @ Write About Now
- Brooke Favero @ Somewhere in the Middle
- Myrna Foster @ Night Writer
- Ally Beecher @ Kid Lit Frenzy
- Barbara Watson @ Novel and Nouveau
- Deb Marshall @ Just Deb!
- Anita Laydon Miller’s Middle Grade Blog
- Michael G-G @ Middle Grade Mafioso
- Natalie Aguirre @ Literary Rambles
- Ms. Yingling @ Ms. Yingling Reads
- Jennifer Rumberger
- Pam Torres @ So I’m Fifty
- Mary @ Writer’s Butt Does Not Apply to Me
- The Accidental Novelist
- Gina Carey
- Nye Louwen – My Spirit
- Laurisa White Reyes @ Apocalypsies
- Andrea Mack @ That’s Another Story
- The Mundie Moms @ Mundie Kids
gsprendergast.com 
My son has read ALL of these (and most of them more than once), so obviously, he loves them. He keeps telling me to read them. What he loved is exactly what you describe–the action adventure.