Happy Monday, Everyone! Today I’m excited to have Donna Galanti here to celebrate the release of her new MG contemporary, The Secret Winners Club. It sounds like a fantastic contemporary story that is on a lot of bloggers’ anticipated 2026 lists, and I’m looking forward to reading it.
Here’s a blurb from Goodreads:
1st Rule of The Secret Winners Do whatever it takes.Thirteen-year-old Sunny Whitlock has alopecia; an autoimmune
condition that’s made her lose her hair—and she’s desperate to be seen as more
than just the bald kid. But how? By setting an epic win her school’s junkbot
club competition. And if she’s #1, then other kids will have to see beyond her
disease … and she’ll finally fit in.
Sunny’s
immune-deficient best friends are also tired of looking different and achieving
second place in their school competitions. With a bold plan, Sunny bands with
them to create The Secret Winners Club, a club devised to win—at any cost—and
push them outside their comfort zones.
They
promise to trust no one else. It’s all classified! And in total secrecy they
aim to help one another become #1 before this middle school year is over. But
as they start to succeed, they quickly discover that crossing the line and
hurting others can make them even more visible and even more
an outsider.
Now here’s Donna!
March is Autoimmune Awareness Month, and which is why I’m grateful that my newest middle grade book by Wild Trail Press, The Secret Winners Club, publishes this week because it has three characters with autoimmune diseases—just like me. As an adult, having conditions that make me look different is often a challenge. However, when it struck me just how much harder this would be for young people in middle school, I wanted to create a story for them.
Writing about medical or health issues in middle grade fiction is powerful, but it’s also tricky. Kids don’t want lectures. They want stories that move, surprise, and entertain them. With this in mind, I wanted to weave health realities into the fabric of the story, so they feel authentic, not instructional.
If you’re writing about characters with medical conditions, here are seven craft approaches that can help health issues exist meaningfully on the page without becoming the entire point of the book.
1. Let the Character Want Something
Bigger Than the Condition
In The Secret Winners Club, the main character, Sunny Whitlock, doesn’t wake up every day thinking about her alopecia, she’s thinking about winning the junkbot competition. Her health condition matters, but it’s not her driving force. Middle grade readers connect most strongly to goals they recognize like belonging, achievement, friendship, and independence. When a character’s primary motivation reaches beyond their diagnosis, the story stays character-driven instead of issue-driven.
2. Show the Condition Through
Obstacles, Not Explanations
Rather than stopping the story to explain a diagnosis, let the condition quietly shape what’s harder—or different—for the character. A moment of hesitation before a public event, an extra layer of planning, or a social misstep can convey more than a paragraph of exposition. Kids are super smart at picking up context clues. Trust them to understand without being told exactly what to think.
3. Make the Health Issue One Thread
in a Bigger Tangle
Middle grade lives are messy. School pressures, friendships, family dynamics, competition, jealousy, and secrets all overlap. Medical issues should be one strand among many, not the entire rope. In The Secret Winners Club, Sunny and her two friends, Vee and Trev, each deal with visible autoimmune diseases. They also want to win their individual school competitions so they can be seen as more than their conditions and beat out their rivals. When it comes to Sunny’s alopecia, Vee’s vitiligo, and Trevor’s psoriasis, these threads all intersect with ambition, moral choices, loyalty, and identity—so it feels like part of life, not the lesson of the book.
4. Avoid the “Inspiration” Trap
Kids with health challenges don’t exist to inspire others. They exist to live full, complicated lives. Let your character be funny, flawed, competitive, jealous, or wrong. Sunny and her friends make questionable choices in pursuit of winning, which I hope keeps them human and relatable. When characters with health issues are allowed to fail or act selfishly (like we all can at times), they feel real and just not symbolic.
5. Use Peer Relationships to
Reflect Reality
Friendships are where middle grade stories truly shine. Showing how peers respond—supportively, awkwardly, incorrectly, or inconsistently—mirrors real-life experiences kids recognize. Sunny’s friendships aren’t perfect, and that’s the point. By letting relationships strain, heal, or shift, the story explores health issues socially without moralizing.
6. Let Consequences Do the Teaching
If there’s a message, let it come from outcomes, not speeches. In The Secret Winners Club, the “win at any cost” mindset creates consequences that Sunny and her friends didn’t anticipate. Readers learn alongside the characters, discovering that shortcuts and secrecy can backfire. This approach respects young readers by allowing them to draw conclusions themselves.
7. Trust Kids with Emotional
Complexity
Middle grade readers can handle
nuance. They understand that someone can be proud and insecure at the same
time, or brave and scared in the same chapter. Health issues don’t need to be
softened or oversimplified, but they also don’t need to dominate every
emotional beat. When you trust kids with layered emotions, the story resonates
longer and deeper.
The most effective middle grade novels don’t teach kids what to think—they invite them to feel, question, and reflect while making their own choices. When health and medical issues are written as part of a character’s lived experience rather than the moral center of the story, readers come away not with a lesson, but with empathy. This is far more powerful than preaching.
About Donna Galanti:
Donna Galanti is the author of middle-grade books with the Unicorn Island series, Joshua and the Lightning Road series, Loon Cove Summer, and The Secret Winners Club (3/3/26). She’s also the author of the paranormal suspense Element Trilogy for adults. Donna has lived in fun locations including England, her family-owned campground in New Hampshire, and in Hawaii where she served as a U.S. Navy photographer for Fleet Intelligence Pacific. Donna is an avid outdoor adventurer and nature lover. She volunteers for the Old-Growth Forest Network and the National Audubon Society. For more information on her books, online courses, speaking, and events, visit her at: www.donnagalanti.com.
Giveaway Details
Donna is generously offering a paperback of The Secret Winners Club for a giveaway. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower of my blog (via the follower gadget, email, or bloglovin’ on the right sidebar) and leave a comment by March 14th. If I do not have your email (I can no longer get it from your Google Profile), you must leave it in the comments to enter the contest. Please be sure I have your email address.
If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites and/or follow me on Twitter or Bluesky or follow Donna on her social media sites, mention this in the comments, and I'll give you an extra entry for each. You must be 13 years old or older to enter. This book giveaway is U.S.
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday is hosted by Greg Pattridge. You can find the participating blogs on his blog.
Upcoming Interviews, Guest Posts, and Blog Hops
Wednesday, March 4, I have an interview with Stacey Lee and a giveaway of her YA Heiress of Nowhere
Monday, March 9, I have an interview with Ciera Burch and a giveaway of her MG Olivia Gray Will Not Fade Away
Wednesday, March 11, I have an agent spotlight interview with Lindsey Aduskevich and a query critique giveaway
Monday, March 16, I’m participating in the Chasing Rainbows Giveaway Hop
Monday, March 23, I have a guest post by Aaron Starmer and a giveaway of his MG You Are Now Old Enough to Hear
Wednesday, March 25, I have an agent spotlight interview with Rob Broder and a query critique giveaway
Monday, March 30, I’m participating in the Honey Bunny Giveaway Hop
I hope to see you on Wednesday!
1 comments:
Thank you so much for having me back on Literary Rambles with the release of The Secret Winners Club! I appreciate the opportunity to talk about writing health issues in kidlit. I think it's so important that young readers who have chronic illnesses are represented in books.
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