Adam Borba’s The Midnight Brigade is a Pittsburgh story for 8 year olds, about a boy who counts bridges to stop himself worrying.<\/p>\n
Carl Chesterfield can see thirty three of them from his bedroom window, and there is something steadying about a sturdy bridge. He counts them when his parents shout in the next room, which is most nights.<\/p>\n
Then a bridge moves. A foot to the left and back, like a squirrel poking its head round a tree. Hundreds of tons of Pittsburgh steel, wobbling.<\/p>\n
Carl’s father builds bridges, as his father did and his grandfather before him. He tells Carl the damage across the city looks intentional. Chunks of steel ripped out in the night. Rows and rows of deep scratches. He is not interested in who is doing it. Carl very much is.<\/p>\n
Carl is the shortest boy in his class. He sits at the middle table in the cafeteria with empty seats on both sides. What he is good at is noticing. Who has new clothes. Who is off sick. Who is having a bad day. He notices all of it and says none of it, in case the person he tells does not care.<\/p>\n
So when a girl in a backward baseball cap slides in beside him and asks him to hold something for her, he does it without hesitating. It is a green metallic marker, and there is now an insult about the headteacher written across the eighth grade lockers.<\/p>\n
Carl gets two weeks off school. He also spots a turquoise flyer on the noticeboard, warning that something is ravaging the city’s bridges, signed by somebody calling themselves the MB.<\/p>\n
He has never told anyone about the monsters. So who put that up?<\/p>\n
What makes it work is how gently it is all handled. The narrator is warm and funny and keeps stopping to explain things, like what a suspension bridge is, or that the Ohio River is oddly in Pennsylvania. Carl’s father is ridiculous and entirely lovable, a man who burps the alphabet on request and keeps a yo-yo in the glove compartment, and who has just quit his job, remortgaged the house and bought a broken food truck.<\/p>\n
The arguing is the thing to think about first, because it runs right through these chapters. Carl slides out of his chair at dinner to get away from it and lies awake listening through the wall. He works out from what his parents shout that the family could lose their home. If you have got a child who worries about their own parents, this will sit very close to that. It is not bleak, and both parents plainly adore him. It is just honest about being the child in that house.<\/p>\n
For the other side of all this, try Bruce Coville’s Trolled. Part of it is narrated by a lonely troll, six feet eleven, nearly two hundred years old, working nights as a watchman in New York because nobody there looks twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adam Borba’s The Midnight Brigade is a Pittsburgh story for 8 year olds, about a boy who counts bridges to stop himself worrying. Carl Chesterfield can see thirty three of them from his bedroom window, and there is something steadying about a sturdy bridge. He counts them when his parents shout in the next room, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11349,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9603,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Bruce Coville's Trolled","lr_seo_hook":"A worrier counts bridges, then sees one move in the night."},"book_tag":[27],"age_group":[26],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[44],"class_list":["post-9234","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-fantasy-books","age_group-books-for-8-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-adam-borba"],"yoast_title":"The Midnight Brigade by Adam Borba | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A worrier counts bridges, then sees one move in the night. For ages 8+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n