My colleague Sara Goering recommended this book to me and I loved it. Annie Barrows’ The Magic Half tells the story of Miri, a middle child with two older twin brothers and two younger twin sisters. The family has just moved to a new home, an old farmhouse, and Miri feels alone in her role as middle child surrounded by twins. In the house Miri discovers magic that takes her back in time to meet a girl her age who lived in the house about seventy years earlier, and who needs her help.
A page-turner, the book provokes questions about time travel and the nature of time, family relationships and identity, and freedom and destiny. A great novel to read with children from ages 7 or 8 and on.
Jana Mohr Lone is the director and founder of the University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children, an academic research center dedicated to research and practice in philosophy for children and philosophy of childhood, and she is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington. Jana is the author of Seen and Not Heard (2021) and The Philosophical Child (2012). She co-authored the textbook Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools (2016) and co-edited the collection of essays Philosophy and Education: Introducing Philosophy to Young People (2012). Since 1995 she has taught philosophy in classrooms from preschool to college and beyond. A frequent writer and speaker about precollege philosophy, Jana is the founding president of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization) and the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Questions: Philosophy for Young People. Follow her on Twitter: @JanaMohrLone