Help me, LJ-wan Kenobi!

I need book recs! Smart, fun middle grade books, specifically. Bonuses awarded for female MCs and MCs of color. Hook me up, LJ.

Public accountability post

I'm thirty-three days into my faux-Lenten sugar purge, and I have broken a couple of times. Once in Boston out of weakness and crabbiness, once again two days later because we found cupcakes and I decided to grant myself another signing cupcake exception, and this morning because a muffin was the better part of valor when confronted with sweet vs. salty & greasy airport breakfasts. Cupcakes have officially become way too much sugar. (Cake is okay, but icing is brutal once its sugar load hits my bloodstream.) I will marshal my virtue and finish my last sugar-free week, and then try to avoid cupcakes.

In more virtuous news, I swept and spot-mopped the front of the house tonight, scrubbed a shelf in the fridge, and did my travel laundry before taking to my bed like a jet-lagged thing.