Today on the site I’m delighted to reveal the cover of Mountain Upside Down by Sara Ryan, a contemporary Middle Grade by the author of my favorite early Sapphic YA, releasing February 11, 2025 from Dutton Books for Young Readers! Here’s the story:

A funny and heartfelt LGBTQIA+ middle grade novel set against the backdrop of family drama and a library funding campaign in a small town.

Alex Eager lives in Faillin, OR with her grandmother, a retired librarian. Life should be great for Alex, since she finally worked up the courage to ask her best friend PJ if they could be more than friends and she said yes. But their new relationship will have to be long distance, because PJ is moving. On top of that, Alex is worried that something is wrong with her increasingly forgetful grandmother. And to make matters worse, Faillin is holding a referendum on library funding, and things aren’t looking good. Will anything good for Alex ever last?

Mountain Upside Down is a beautifully crafted story of a thirteen-year-old girl finding her place in her family and her community. It’s a queer-positive story that doesn’t center coming out. It’s a story of a library’s role in a community that doesn’t feature book banning. And it’s a story of long-held family secrets and resentment that focuses not on final resolution but learning how to communicate again.

And here’s the sweet cover, designed by Anna Booth with art by Ana von Huben!

Buy it: Bookshop | Amazon

Sara grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the only child of two librarians in a book-filled house. Their writing has been honored by Lambda Literary, the Eisner Awards, the American Library Association, and the Oregon Book Awards, among other recognition. Sara has worked as a fast-food cashier, a theater technician, a stringed-instruments-and-accessories seller, a preparer of materials for science experiments, a web designer for “JIFFY” Mix (briefly!), a teen services librarian, and a writing teacher. They’ve served as a mentor for We Need Diverse Books and a master class instructor with Writing the Other. Sara lives in Portland, Oregon.