Chess Middle Grade Novels? Yes, Please! Part I

Howdy! It’s the Chess Friends!

The Man Benji is a man on a mission. The mission: to read every novel that features chess! Previously, we posted about chess-themed picture books and chess-themed non-fiction books.

Here are our first three picks for chess-themed middle grade novels, featuring girls, boys, and mice playing chess!

Always, Clementine, by Carlie Sorosiak (2022)

This novel is written as letters from the main character, Clementine, to her friend. Our review is written as a letter to you all, in the style of the book!

Dear Fellow Future Master Chess Friends,

Have you read this book yet? It’s about a superintelligent mouse Clementine, who escapes from a treacherous research lab. She finds humans—a boy and his grandpa—who take her under their wings. Just kidding, humans don’t have wings! They take her under their arms and teach her how to play chess. All Clementine has is five days to master chess and play the game of her life on a TV show: to prove that she is intelligent and to stop the lab workers from figuring out why!!! Chess saves lives. Read books and play chess!

Always,

The Chess Friends

Not an Easy Win, by Chrystal D. Gyles (2023)

The main character Lawrence likes chess, and music in his headphones. Here is a review with a beat.

Life is tough for Lawrence; he fights a lot. Not cool.

Lawrence gets in fights so much that he’s expelled from school!

He spends his time at rec, but fights there too, the fool.

Because the others baited him and used him as a tool!

Then Lawrence learns the game of chess and its important rule:

Think twice before you do something to check if it’s uncool.

Soon Lawrence and the gang go to a tourney by carpool.

There, among those people, he's like a molecule.

Right before the chess games start, there is a big whirlpool.

But all is good, lessons are learned, and now it's time to duel!

Rhymes aside, I really liked getting to know Lawrence, and I liked his voice, and how chess helped him to find his people and himself. Find your own beat and play chess!

May the Best Player Win, by Kyla Zhao (2024)

This book is about May, a 7th-grade chess girl. (May and May the Best Player Win—get it? The book is full of such puns. If you know me, I like a good knee-slapper!)

May won the Judit Polgar Girl’s award at a local state chess championship, and her school team qualified for Nationals. Now she wants to win her school mini-chess tournament to become the team captain. But some think that she is not good enough to be the captain, and that all of this buzz around May is only because she is a girl. How dare they?!

Now May has to prove that she’s good at chess. The pressure is mounting on May: should May drop everything and train to win no matter what? Does she even have time to hang out with her friends? Soon, she feels like an overloaded chess piece, one that is defending too many things at once. Chess is becoming no fun anymore! How will she solve her problems? Be a good friend and play chess!

That’s all for now. Read books and play chess! Let us know what other chess books you would like us to feature!

Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!

The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, and The Legend Vivi