Middle Grade Is "Dead" And I Think That's Good News
I say this at conferences a lot. I’ve been saying it for about a year, actually, ever since a conversation with a large publisher that genuinely rearranged something in my brain. I’ve been meaning to write a post about it ever since, but I kept hesitating—worried it would panic writers who are already in a hard moment.
But everyone is already panicked so…here we go!
The Thing the Editorial Team Said
I was in a meeting with a Big Five editorial team, and somewhere in the conversation about the state of the kids’ market, one of the editors said that the downfall of middle grade was Harry Potter’s fault.
I asked them to say more.
What they laid out was one of the most clarifying things I’ve heard about children’s publishing in years. And once they explained it, I couldn’t unsee it.
Sorcerer’s Stone comes in at 76,944 words—already pushing the upper limits of what middle grade had been. But it sold. And then it really sold.
I’ll note here: she-who-must-not-be-named is not someone I love platforming—her very public campaign against trans people is causing real harm. But I can’t write this post without mentioning her, so...don’t buy her stuff, okay?
By Order of the Phoenix, the word count had climbed to 257,045 words…more than three times the length of the book that started it all. There’s a publishing term for what happened to Rowling by that point: she became “uneditable.” When you’re generating the kind of revenue she was, you get to do what you want. Editors keep editing, but authors start ignoring them. The books kept getting longer, heavier, and darker, gradually shifting from middle grade into young adult.
Other publishers watched the stratospheric success of HP and did what publishers always do: they tried to replicate it. Middle grade, as a category, started trending longer. More complex. More ambitious in scope.
And over time, middle grade became something that kids could no longer read.
The Literacy Problem
I spent six years as an elementary school teacher. My older students (fifth and sixth graders) were the ones I watched this happen to in real time, before I even had the industry context to understand what I was seeing. I’d watch them pick up a book, flip to see how many words were on each page, and put it back down.
Literacy scores in the US had been declining for over a decade before COVID. NAEP scores began to flatten, and gaps between the highest- and lowest-performing students widened. The pandemic didn’t create the problem. It exacerbated an issue that was already there. The 2024 results show that fewer than a third of students nationwide are working at the NAEP Proficient level in reading, and around 40 percent of 4th graders are working below the NAEP Basic level—the largest percentage since 2002.
So we had a kids’ book market producing 70,000-80,000-word middle grade novels (which had become the industry standard) and a generation of young readers who genuinely couldn’t read them. Not because they weren’t smart. Because the books weren’t designed for them.
So parents stopped buying them. Librarians stopped buying them. Schools stopped buying them.
Sales tanked.
And then, mid-pandemic, Barnes & Noble made a decision: they were pulling back on debut middle grade. If the shelf space was going to go to kids’ books, it would go to “proven sellers.”
That was a massive revenue loss for publishers. Because Barnes & Noble wasn’t buying debuts, publishers stopped acquiring as many. And because sales were low across the board, middle grade acquisitions largely ground to a halt.
This is the moment everybody started saying middle grade was dead.
If you want more details on what's been happening in publishing, I wrote about it here: What Nobody's Telling Querying Writers About What's Happening to Publishing Right Now
What Quietly Thrived While Middle Grade Struggled
Graphic novels completely took off.1
In 2019, graphic novel sales hit $1.21 billion. Then COVID hit, and sales jumped to $1.28 billion in 2020…
…then exploded to $2.08 billion in 2021. A 62% increase in a single year.
By 2022 they hit $2.16 billion. While middle grade was cratering, graphic novels were having their best moment in history. And they haven’t looked back—2025 came in at $2.12 billion, Q1 2026 has already surged another 28.5%.2
From 2019 to now, the market nearly doubled.
When you understand the context, this makes complete sense. Kids can’t read middle grade, so they turn to the alternative with two key things:
Shorter word counts
Lots of illustrations
Those struggling to get through dense chapters could fly through a graphic novel. The visual storytelling carried them. They finished books. They felt like readers.
Kids didn’t stop wanting stories. They stopped being able to access the stories the industry was handing them.
What I’m Starting to See Change
Here’s the part that actually makes me hopeful—and the reason I think this rough time in publishing (as hard as it is) is also a turning point.
Editors are figuring it out. Super, incredibly, painfully slowly, but the conversations are shifting. Word count expectations for kids’ books are coming back down to something that actually matches where young readers are.
Illustrated chapter books for younger readers in the 5,000 to 10,000 word range. (Think Magic Tree House with lots of art.)
Older chapter books around 20,000 to 30,000. (Often illustrated as well.)
Middle grade landing between 30,000 and 40,000, with fantasy being the exception—and even then, capping out around 50,000.
YA is recalibrating too. As middle grade reclaims its appropriate space, young adult is getting more genuinely teen, and shorter. New Adult is finally being carved out as its own category—rather than being smooshed together with YA into that awkward Frankenstein genre that served neither audience particularly well.
The Space Nobody Is Filling (Yet)
The gray space between early chapter books and middle grade—highly illustrated, short, pacey books for kids who are past picture books but not yet ready for dense chapters—is still almost entirely uncharted territory. I’ve heard editors craving it, but I’ve also heard how hard it is to get it past the higher-ups. Acquisition is data-driven, so if the data isn’t there, making a case is an uphill battle.
Teachers have been asking for books that live here for years.
As a former teacher myself, I’ve heard this ask in a hundred different forms, and the only publisher (in my opinion!) that is genuinely leading this space right now is Scholastic’s Branches imprint. They seem to understand something the rest of the market is still catching up to.
Why I’m Choosing to Call This a Chrysalis Moment
Middle grade didn’t die. The category got too long and too far removed from what young readers actually needed. The market learned it the hard way, and now the people making books for children are recalibrating.
I know there’s a lot going on right now. In publishing, in the world, in all of it. It’s heavy. I won’t pretend it isn’t.
But my dad always says this too shall pass. And I keep coming back to that. Not as a way of dismissing the hard things, but as a reminder that hard times have another side. We’ve just got to keep fighting for it. If we do, the books that come out of this moment are going to be better for it. Tighter, more joyful, more honest about where kids actually are and who they can become. Written by people who cared enough to keep going when the market made it difficult. Who change the next generation.
It could be you. I really believe that.
And if this resonated—if you're a kidlit writer trying to figure out your next move in a market that's shifting under your feet—I'd love to talk. Book an ask-me-anything call here.
I disagree. That's not the reason for declining literacy. There’s tons of books for kids to choose to read that are age appropriate (and developmentally appropriate) as libraries and bookstores testify. The reason for declining literacy is our education system is getting worse and worse at teaching reading. School teaches kids that reading is a chore, that you have to read what the curriculum says, that you can't read what you want to read, and you have to be challenged. It used to mainly be a problem in high school. I remember when I was a student, elementary and middle school were the ages I loved to read. High school and college stole my love for reading. But now elementary and middle school are doing the same. The politics behind the education section has contributed to declining literacy for ages. I beg for schools to make reading fun for all ages again.
I have been on a campaign for two decades to use "Teen" rather than "Young Adult." Librarians are making the shift -- not just because of me.😄 It's profession-wide. I expect bookstores and publishers will follow ... eventually.