Posted in Craft of writing, Middle grade books, Young adult fiction | Tagged Caroline Carlson, Coe Booth, E. What are some of your favorite middle grade books?īook covers from Goodreads and Pinterest. 🙂Ĭlick here for a great reading analysis post by Shane Snow. The latter mentions a bookstore that delineates middle grade fiction books as books for middle graders. Another good post is by Malinda Lo (click here for it) and this one by Judith Rosen. So though your protagonist might be 11 or 12, your core reader might be 8 or 9.Ĭlick here for an excellent post by Marie Lamba on the difference between middle grade books and young adult books. Just because your favorite author could get away with a 90,000-word middle grade book that doesn’t mean you automatically can! And don’t forget that kids like to read about kids older than them, but still close in age. Check online for the requirements for middle grade books, particularly word count and subject matter. Study the pacing, characterization, rhythms of dialogue, and the plots. Want to write a middle grade book? You might start by reading middle grade books-as many as you can get your hands on.

(Or they don’t need to read, since “everyone” can write.) But I’m tasked with enforcing them. And what became apparent to me very quickly was that these authors probably had not read many (or any) books geared toward the age level for which they claimed to write.ĭo you know any musicians who never or only seldom listen to the music of others? Sounds ludicrous, right? Yet writing is a discipline that some feel they’ve mastered simply because they’ve written a story, all the while claiming they “don’t have time” to read books. The inclusion of these items shows a lack of understanding about what’s considered appropriate for a middle grade book. Recently I read a few middle grade manuscripts with a high vocabulary (around the eighth grade level) that included F-bombs and other profanity, romantic relationships (including the desire for sex), and long passages of introspection. Classic stories, crossover stories, some fantasy stories, and other stories meant for family reading might score higher. Many middle grade books have a lower readability level than that. Because of these tests, many periodicals and books have been assessed at a sixth grade level. (Whew!)Īnother help: the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests, which gauge the ease or difficulty of a passage read in English. When I copied several of my paragraphs into the tool, they were assessed at the third and fourth grade levels, which is fitting for a middle grade book. It assesses the grade level when you copy into the tool an excerpt from your work. The tool Sharon’s post mentioned provided one kind of help. I don’t pretend to be an expert on middle grade books, so I seek help whenever I can.

I’m writing a middle grade book with an eleven-year-old protagonist who is about to turn twelve. But this series started off middle grade. Its audience spans from children to adults.

The Harry Potter series is an exception, because it evolved over time. Under the Mermaid Angel by Martha MooreĪnd many, many others.Hope Is a Ferris Wheel by Robin Herrera.Magic Marks the Spot by Caroline Carlson.One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia.The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan.The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo.Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin.There are some exceptions, as you’ll quickly note if you’ve read the books in the following list. Remember the books you loved as a kid? Middle grade books are typically shorter than young adult books-around 30,000-50,000 words (longer for fantasy books). But young adult books are geared toward middle grade to high school-aged kids-a wide range of readers. Yes, some middle graders read middle grade books. Middle grade books are for kids in third through sixth grade-kids 8-12. Ha ha! If so, you and I should have ice cream together someday.) Do you think of middle graders-sixth through eighth grade? Makes sense, right? Middle graders-middle grade books. But I’ll talk more about that later.įirst, let me ask you this: When you think of the primary audience of a middle grade book, what age group comes to mind? (If you’re an adult like me who reads middle grade books, maybe you think of yourself. Sharon mentions a tool I used to check my WIP. You can get to Sharon’s post by clicking on the post’s title. A really helpful blog post by my good friend Sharon Van Zandt- “Hemingway’s Way”-and my recent review of several manuscripts for a venue I cannot name at this time prompted this post.

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