Middle Grade Word Count by Peggy Thomas

Lately the Ninjas have been discussing middle grade nonfiction, specifically word count. How long is the typical book? It depends on what you call typical. Is it trade nonfiction, or a title in an educational series? To start with, the middle grade reader is considered 8 – 12 years old, or in 3-6 grade.

One useful tool that I’ve used in the past to find the word count on a mentor text is the website Accelerated Reader Bookfinder (ARB).  Its primary purpose is to connect readers with books, but ARB can be helpful for writers as well. 

When you go into the site it will ask if you are a parent, teacher, student or librarian. Choose any one, it doesn’t seem to matter. In the advanced search you can look for a specific title, author, grade level, publisher, and limit the search to nonfiction. When a title comes up, click on it to see all the information including ATOS reading level, recommended grade range, number of pages, and word count. Search enough titles and you’ll see that word count varies.  I randomly searched mid-grade NF published by Clarion and found:

            Anita Silvey (2008) I’ll Pass for Your Comrade – 115 pages, 13,379 words.
            Emily Arnold McCully (2014) Ida M. Tarbell – 279 pages 57,116 words.
            Marc Aronson (2011) Trapped – 134 pages, 22,439 words.
(You’ll notice that ARB is not all-encompassing. It does not have every title and lags behind by a couple of years. But it still is a useful tool.)

Then I randomly looked at several educational publishers and the word counts ranged from 2000 to 5000.  My books  for Lucent that I consider mid-grade and average 15,000 to 20,000 words are, on this website, considered YA.  And my 48-page picture books that have 2500-3000 words that I consider mid-grade are listed here for K-3. 
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So, what is a mid-grade word count? 
My quick answer would be 20,000.
But really…it depends.