When I first started writing fiction, I wrote character-driven young adult romance novels. I was teaching seventh and eighth graders at the time and was trying to young Young adult novels, which many of my students craved. I wrote books with protagonists who were in ninth or tenth grade and relatively innocent and inexperienced – at least when it came to romance and partying. That was the kind of teenager I was, and the kind of protagonist some of my students were looking for.
Many of my students also read older YA novels with 16, 17, or 18 year old main characters, but sometimes they wanted books that were closer to their current stage of life. There was a need for more novels that were a little challenging but also relatable.
They had many opportunities to escape into a world that was far more mature, glamorous and exciting than their own. Fewer opportunities, however, were available in books that were closer to them and offered them the opportunity to escape and imagine while seeing more of their own concerns and experiences reflected.
My young adult novels didn’t sell to publishers. Editors often gave feedback that they were too quiet, that the main characters were too naive, or that the tone or premise – or both – sounded more like middle-grade than young adult fiction.
Eventually, I took that advice and started writing middle grade novels. I realized that my best chance of getting stories published for middle school-aged readers was to write for the older middle grades rather than the younger YA category, and that’s where I found my niche.
I love writing upper middle grade novels. But when I shifted my focus from YA to middle grade, my stories were no longer all about romance. All of my published books have had at least hints of crushes and potential romantic relationships, but I hadn’t written any real romance novels—until my new book, Keep up.
Keep up is the story of two overachieving former friends turned rivals who must train for a half marathon the summer after eighth grade and rethink what it really means to win—and what they really mean to each other. Before I wrote it, I had internalized the idea that I couldn’t write a straight tween romance. But then, in the summer of 2021, I was stuck.
I was creatively burned out and had a major reading slump in middle school. I just couldn’t get excited about middle grade novels, even when I knew the novels were excellent. I was only interested in reading young adult and adult romance novels.
The general writing advice is: “Write what you know,” but I think it is at least as important to write what you Love. I loved romance. The only kind of story I could imagine was one with a dizzying, awkward, swoon-worthy romance.
And then I realized was some other middle school authors who write romance novels. I had Debbi Michiko’s Hang in there, Keiko Carter And Just be cool, Jenna Sakai. I was delighted by the witty romantic sayings in Shannon Doleski’s Mary Underwater and moved to tears by the vulnerable love dynamics in Nicole Melleby’s In the role of Brie Hutchens. So I set out to write my own love story for mediocre adults.
When I wrote my novel Up into the airI had a clear audience in mind. I knew my students would identify with the main character, Annabelle. Many of them had had similar experiences—playing on an older sports team or playing with older musicians in an orchestra and grappling with how they could and couldn’t keep up. In this novel, I wrote about many topics that I wasn’t sure I was allowed to “dive into” in middle school. But I kept going because I was so convinced it was a story that kids wanted.
Keep up was the opposite. When I started writing it, I hadn’t been in the classroom for a couple of years. I hadn’t taught since before the pandemic, so I had missed a tremendous, traumatic part of middle school readers’ lives. And I wrote this story almost entirely for myself. I returned to the aspects of my shelved young adult novels that had meant the most to me. I wrote about 14-year-old characters because that was my most socially difficult age, and this is the version of my former self that I am most tender to. I wrote the first first kiss scene I had written in years, and it was a Explosion.
This autumn, after Keep up finished, I went back to teaching middle school. And so many readers—middle schoolers and fifth graders too—were coming to my sixth grade library looking for romance novels. Some of them are ready for young adult romance novels, at least some of the time. And I know a small number of delightful “young” YA novels like the ones I wanted to publish earlier—Tiffany Schmidt’s Book lovers Series for example and Olivia Abtahis Perfect Parvin And Azar is burning. But many of those readers are excited about middle grade romance novels, like Debbi Michiko Florence’s books and Nashae Jones’ Courtesy of Cupidand Wendy Wan-Long Shang Bladder problemsAnd my Keep upI hope so too.
A school library media specialist named Steve Tetreault recently posted on social media that he prefers the term “developmentally relevant” to “age-appropriate,” and I completely agree.
“Age-appropriate” sounds prejudiced. It doesn’t take into account the fact that two children of the same age will have completely different life experiences, perspectives, and feelings about different content, and it raises the question of who exactly gets to decide what is “appropriate.” “Developmentally appropriate” is what I, as a writer and as a teacher, have always tried to convey to middle school readers.
My books are labeled “10- to 14-year-olds,” but that doesn’t mean they’re relevant to every child in that age range. In recent years, “higher MG” has been getting more attention as a subcategory. There are more books about thirteen-year-olds than there used to be. But we still don’t have enough—and we especially don’t have enough books with fourteen- and fifteen-year-old characters. The relative scarcity of young teen characters makes it even harder for tweens and young teens to find the developmentally relevant stories they crave.
And it’s especially important to have a wider selection of books centered around romance for pre-teen and young teen readers. Romance is awkward and complicated and amazing and confusing – especially for adolescents! Adolescents are in such completely different places in terms of what they know and want. Not every middle school reader wants romance, but now that I’m back in the classroom, I see again that many of those who do want romance Really want it. And we owe them more opportunities to find the stories that are relevant to them.
I’m excited to expand this category, for the benefit of my current students, my former students, and my former teenage self. I’m glad that middle school readers have more choices than they did when I first started teaching and writing. And I still think they need more.
BIO: Laurie Morrison is co-author of Everything shiny and author of Up into the air, Saint Ivy: Friendly at any price,Falling shortand her latest novelKeep upin which friends-turned-rivals train for a half marathon. When Laurie was in her twenties, she fell in love with long-distance running and ran three marathons and several half marathons. Laurie holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her middle-grade novels have received stellar reviews and been selected as Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections and finalists for state award lists. She lives with her family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she teaches middle-grade language arts.