Best Chapter Books 2022

"Bumpfizzle is an alien, sent to Earth from Planet Plonk on a research mission. Or is he really just a ten-year-old boy who is feeling a bit disgruntled at all the attention his parents are lavishing on The Baby? It is up to readers to make up their own minds. Either way, Bumpfizzle's confusion at Earthling behaviours, as reported in his diary and his frequent reports back to Plonk, are hilarious, and his adventures are ridiculous, from eating the...

In this comical twist on sibling rivalry, a girl decides she needs a new family, so she writes "free kid" on a box and waits in the street for some better parents to choose her.

When sixth-grader Mac discovers several words of his classroom copy of Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic are blacked out he is outraged, so he, his friends, and his eccentric family set out to do something about the censorship imposed by one teacher and the school board.

Pesah has lived with leprosy for years, and the twins have spent most of that time working on a cure. Then Pesah has a vision: The Angel of Death will come for him on Rosh Hashanah, just one month away. So Ziva takes her brother and runs away to find doctors who can cure him. But when they meet and accidentally free a half-demon boy, he suggests paying his debt by leading them to the fabled city of Luz, where no one ever dies--the one place Pesah...

"When Brie was younger, her mama used to surprise her with treasure hunts around their island town. After she died three years ago, these became Brie's favorite memories. Now, on her twelfth birthday, her mama has another surprise: a series of letters leading Brie on one last treasure hunt. The first letter guides Brie to a special place. The next urges her to unlock a secret. And the last letter will change life as she knows it"--Provided by publisher....

Mallory Moss knows the rules of middle school: Wear the right clothes, say the right things, know your place. But when Jennifer Chan moves in across the street, the rules no longer seem to apply. Jennifer doesn't care about the laws of middle school, or the laws of the universe for that matter. She believes in aliens - and she thinks she can find them. Then Jennifer goes missing. The adults say she ran away, but Mallory isn't so sure. Using clues...

"Jeremy is not excited about the prospect of spending the summer with his dad and his uncle in a seaside cabin in Oregon. It's the first summer after his parents' divorce, and he hasn't exactly been seeking alone time with his dad. He doesn't have a choice, though, so he goes . . . and on his first day takes a walk on the beach and finds himself intrigued by a boy his age running by. Eventually, he and Runner Boy (Evan) meet--and what starts out as...

Melanie Gate, a foundling with a peculiar talent for opening the unopenable, agrees to accompany a gearling automaton named Traveler on his quest to find a home, only to be pursued by the most dangerous wizard in the land and, along the way, discover her true powers.

"From the acclaimed actor and Stonewall Honor-winning author of The Best at It, Maulik Pancholy, comes a new middle grade novel about a gay Indian American boy who learns the power of using his voice. Thirteen-year-old Nikhil Shah is the beloved voice actor for Raj Reddy on the hit animated series Raj Reddy in Outer Space. But being a star on TV doesn't mean you have everything figured out behind the scenes. . . . When his mom temporarily moves them...

Meet Resilience, a Mars rover determined to live up to his name. Res was built to explore Mars. He was not built to have human emotions. But as he learns new things from the NASA scientists who assemble him, he begins to develop human-like feelings. Maybe there's a problem with his programming. Human emotions or not, launch day comes, and Res blasts off to Mars, accompanied by a friendly drone helicopter named Fly. But Res quickly discovers that Mars...