Amanda MacGregor

Minnesota

Contributor at Teen Librarian Toolbox

Writing, reading, reviewing, libraries, dogs, YA, mental health, and Teen Librarian Toolbox. She/her. Rep'd by @aecbks.

Featured in: Favicon

teenlibrariantoolbox.com Favicon

slj.com

Articles

Take Five: Trans and Nonbinary Characters in 2025 Middle Grade Novels

6 days ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

Representation, of all kinds, has always been important and necessary. In the past many years, we’ve been fortunate enough to get really good LGBTQIA+ rep in books for children and young adults. I am grateful that all those books exist so that children can see themselves and their experiences reflected back to them.
Reluctant Readers: New Approaches to Reading Struggles

6 days ago | slj.com | Amanda MacGregor |J. Caleb Mozzocco

With the 2024 Nation’s Report Card showing further declines in reading, more support for struggling readers and their educators has never been more important. And the rise of the evidence-based science of reading in recent years has made clear that a multifaceted approach works best. “We know that struggling readers need engaging, decodable texts that build vocabulary, background knowledge, comprehension, and cultural capital as well,” says Sarah Forbes, publisher, DK Learning.
There Are No Drugstore Sympathy Cards for You: Processing the Loss of a Friend through Comics, a guest post by Jason Walz

1 week ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

Just before the entire world fell apart in 2020, I lost my best friend Kris to pancreatic cancer. I guess if you squinted and looked at it in just the right light and turned your head upside down, you might say that he was “lucky”. He missed out on all the terrifying politics, COVID-19, and the murder of George Floyd that happened in our neighborhood. Years before Kris passed, he had written a short story about a world turned upside down.
Book Review: Rabbit Rabbit by Dori Hillestad Butler and Sunshine Bacon

1 week ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

Publisher’s descriptionTo rebuild their broken family, a pair of audacious tween cousins must confront the long-buried secrets that destroyed it in this upper middle grade novel told from dual perspectives. Twelve-year-olds Alice and Bee are practically strangers when their grandparents’ anniversary party reunites their estranged families and ignites their own fast friendship.
Imagining the Past, a guest post by Emily Jones

1 week ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

It’s late in the day in Santander, Spain, a rainy November afternoon, and I have a crick in my neck. I’ve been sitting on this stool for too many hours, slowly making my way through thousands of tiny fragments of bone, most 2 centimeters or less.
Author Adina King on YA Debut ‘The House No One Sees’ | 5 Questions and a Rec

1 week ago | slj.com | Trisha Tobias |a Rec |Amanda MacGregor |Kara Yorio

In this Q&A series, SLJ poses five questions and a request for a book recommendation to a debut YA author. Adina King shares about The House No One Sees in this latest installment. 1. Congrats on your YA debut! How would you describe your book to readers? Thank you! The House No One Sees is a contemporary YA with surrealist elements written in alternating prose and verse. It is the story of Penelope Ross, a girl who must walk through her past to save her present.
Ignoring a Problem Doesn’t Make it Magically Disappear: Dori Hillestad Butler and Sunshine Bacon in Conversation

1 week ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

DHB: Well, we did it, Sunshine. We wrote a book together. Happy Launch Day!While working on this book, we discussed the possibility that it would be banned. We even laughed as we tossed around certain ideas, knowing the book surely would be challenged if we included them. How do you feel about the likelihood of our book being challenged today, Sunshine? SB: Oh, it absolutely will be challenged! But this book is necessary.
Book Review: Please Pay Attention by Jamie Sumner

1 week ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

Publisher’s descriptionA girl with cerebral palsy navigates loss, grief, and the aftermath of trauma following a school shooting in a world that wasn’t built for her in this deeply affecting novel in verse from Jamie Sumner, the acclaimed author of Roll with It.There is a Before and an After for eighth grader Bea Coughlin. Before the shooting at her school that took the lives of her classmates and teacher and After, when she must figure out how to grieve, live, and keep rolling forward.
Autism Isn’t A Superpower, and Other Stories, a guest post by DeAndra Davis

1 week ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

Okay, so the title doesn’t seem fully connected to my book, but I promise—I’ll get there. I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until I was an adult, and I didn’t make the connections that I was autistic until after my son Deon was diagnosed at the age of three.
Take Five: 2025 Middle Grade Debuts, Part Two

1 week ago | teenlibrariantoolbox.com | Amanda MacGregor

As I said in part one: One thing I’m going to try to do more on the blog this year is include lists of debut middle grade books. We all know it’s been increasingly hard for middle grade books to get shelf space and attention, especially if they’re not written by known or popular authors. Hopefully by drawing attention to these debuts, they will end up on more TBR lists and collection development orders, helping them find readers just looking to discover a new favorite author.