What is happening with middle grade fiction?

Firstly, to clarify, middle grade fiction in the US tends to be for 8-12 year olds, what we in NZ would say is upper primary grades, and/or lower intermediate. It’s more wide-ranging than we think from that age span. Check out the books that win the Newbery Award as a starting point. 

A couple of years ago (2024), it seemed like the big news in the US was the downturn in middle grade fiction. It came up again in 2025, and I’ve heard similar things for 2026. So what might be going on here?

Firstly, I went back to articles from 2024, such as this one - https://fromthemixedupfiles.com/the-middle-grade-slump/ - that talked about the big slump in sales. MG was down by 10%, and that was after slowing sales in previous years. However, some ‘experts’ said it was just sales returning to pre-pandemic levels. Was that actually true?

Because along with the slump in sales came more book challenges in schools, MG books that were longer and therefore either less appealing to poorer readers or that were ‘aging up’ – meaning their content was actually more suitable for 10-14 year olds than the traditional 8-12 year olds. Then of course we had the growing popularity of graphic novels. Where did they fit?

And, as this article points out - https://www.circana.com/post/middle-grade-readers-are-underperforming-in-the-us-book-market-circana-reports  - books are continuing to face big competition from the screen. TV and videos, sure, but also video games, online games to play, movies and YouTube content for kids, and channels such as Nickelodeon.

We also have to remember that kids don’t read reviews! They tend to pick up books based on their friends’ recommendations, or books connected to TV shows, or they simply reach for familiar series like The Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants.

Articles in 2025 said similar things (meaning the MG market wasn’t picking up) and this Publisher’s Weekly article from that year - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/98535-middle-grade-is-down-but-never-out.html - showed that publishers and agents were looking for the trends and trying to build on them. It’s worth a read.

So what are those trends? I’m summarising because I know often industry articles can suddenly be inaccessible. To quote: "Kelly Sonnack, president and owner of Andrea Brown Literary Agency, hears editors say they want “shorter attention-grabbing middle grade that is going to hit that high-interest, low-reading level.” So even fantasy is not favoured if it goes over 50,000 words.

They’re looking for books with “distinctive hooks”, stories that are plot-based (which are easier to pitch than stories with deeper themes or issues). There’s also a growth of interest in verse novels, which are seen as enticing reluctant readers. (So far, verse novels are rarely seen in NZ, more often in Australia.) Graphic novels are still popular but they take a long time to create – an illustrator can spend one or two years on one novel.

It’s getting much harder for debut authors to get a foothold as well. In a soft market, publishers tend to go for authors they know already do well in sales terms. The world isn’t a good place, kids are aware of the news, so they may well be going for funny books, or fantasy. Quieter books are not in favour, but publishers are hoping the pendulum will swing back.

Speaking for myself, I love writing for this age group, but I’m not a Captain Underpants kind of writer. However, given what I know now about where the market and the needs are in these current times, it does give me ideas. Maybe it’s time to go back through my notebooks and look for my sillier stories!

Funnily enough, after slower years, there was quite a lot of MG fiction published in NZ last year, led by Stacey Gregg’s book, Nine Girls. But there were a lot fewer YA novels around. It would be interesting to hear from NZ publishers what they think.

Sherryl Clark

(Sherryl’s verse novel, The Only Branch on the Family Tree, is a Storylines Notable Book.)