Читать книгу Writing Children's Books For Dummies - Peter Economy - Страница 43

With an average page count that’s anywhere from 96 to 156 pages, middle-grade books target 8- to 12-year-olds, and they normally come in the small 5½-x-8½ size. They can be hardcover or softcover. Many get developed into series, such as the A Series of Unfortunate Events series by Lemony Snicket (HarperCollins), but just as many are stand-alones (meaning they’re solo titles and never get developed into series).

Author Gary Paulsen’s popular fiction titles, including Hatchet (Simon & Schuster) and Nightjohn (Random House Children’s Books), provide good examples of the fluidity of age levels and labeling. Although many bookstores categorize his fiction in the young adult section of the store, many other bookstores shelve his books with the middle-grade books. So which format do his books fall into — young adult novels or middle-grade fiction? The answer is up for grabs. In the end, it just opens up books to more readers. The books in Figure 2-11 also offer good examples of middle-grade novels that skew toward the upper-middle grades but might not appeal as much to young adults (14 years old and older).

a) Talk of the Town: The Jessie Files, Book 1, and b) The Friendship Feature: The Jessie Files, Book 2, by Stacia Deutsch. Jacket art copyright © 2022 by Albert Whitman & Company.

FIGURE 2-11: Example middle-grade novels.