"Middle grade is dead! Middle grade is dead!” the press proclaims. And while it’s true that a 2024 report from Circana BookScan showed that print unit sales of middle grade books fell 5% in the first half of 2024 from the same period in 2023, publishing executives are more optimistic than headlines would suggest. PW spoke with movers and shakers of five newish imprints that are aiming to turn the tide on sales in the age category.
High-interest reads
Donna Bray, senior VP and copublisher at Balzer + Bray, agrees that the difficulties of the middle grade market are particularly acute now. “There was a pandemic boom, but it benefited popular authors and brands; discoverability for any other books became incredibly difficult,” she says. “We rely on educators, librarians, booksellers, and other tastemakers to reach middle graders. Industry conferences came to a halt; author tours and school visits, the lifeblood of middle grade book sales, stopped and were slow in restarting, and word of mouth among students, isolated at home, became more difficult. We haven’t fully recovered from the breaks in those chains.”
Yet Bray is optimistic that this downward trend is reversible, and she is motivated by the ongoing success of “authors such as Katherine Applegate and series like John Patrick Green’s InvestiGators and Dhonielle Clayton’s Conjureverse,” she says. “Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures proves that a classic fantasy over 350 pages long can hit big. I’m also heartened by the explosion in graphic novels—it shows that middle graders still want to lose themselves in stories.”
In 2024 Bray and her copublisher Alessandra Balzer brought their Balzer + Bray imprint from HarperCollins Children’s Books to Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, and have built a new list, which launches next year, of picture books, middle grade, YA fiction, and graphic novels. She sees it as her mission to deliver middle grade fiction that “acts as a bridge to longer books—short, propulsive, evocative novels with brief, punchy chapters,” she says. “Books that engage readers quickly and make them feel successful can build their attentional muscle to read longer and more complex books down the line.”
The imprint’s 2026 lineup of shorter, high-interest books exemplify this, including The Lion’s Run by Sara Pennypacker, set during WWII with “spies, horses, and life-and-death stakes,” Bray says; Jasmine Warga’s The Unlikely Tale of Chase and Finnegan, centered on the bond between a rescue dog and an anxious orphaned cheetah cub; Spindlewood by Freddie Kölsch, about a born skeptic who finds herself at a boarding school for seers; and The Serpent, the Rainbow, the Island Below, a middle grade debut by Ibi Zoboi, a fantasy novel rooted in Haitian mythology.
Middle grade books are the linchpin of the industry, Bray says. “Most avid readers are created between the ages of eight and 12. Our whole industry should be invested in this reading cohort.”
Going graphic
In May 2024, Abrams Children’s Group launched Abrams Fanfare, a graphic novel imprint for early, middle grade, and young adult readers. Associate publisher Maggie Lehrman also reiterated the current challenges in the middle grade space. “It doesn’t help that Barnes & Noble has limited the number of titles that they’re taking in this category,” she says, but she also believes that “these things are cyclical. We’re due for an upswing. One or two big hits can raise the whole profile of an age group. Abrams published Diary of a Wimpy Kid in 2007, and it brought attention to the age group and the format and lifted all boats, as the proverb goes.”
Abrams Fanfare’s launch list in fall ’24 included “the big breakout, Mythmakers by John Hendrix, which is nonfiction,” Lehrman says. “We have creators like Nathan Hale, with Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales, who we’ve also been publishing for years. And the Black Lives series is a new nonfiction series by Tonya Bolden. We’ve published Tonya in many formats—picture books, middle grade—but this was her first graphic novel. We paired her with David Wilkerson, who did a phenomenal job making Tonya’s incredible nonfiction research come to life. It’s been a nice mix of creators we have developed relationships with and new people we’re bringing into the fold.”
The imprint is also leaning into young middle grade readers, ages six to nine, with an ongoing series called Bat Cat by Meggie Ramm that is aimed at that readership, Lehrman says. “I’m hoping the vibrancy of that segment of the market will help create those readers and, as they age, keep them hooked on books.”
Manga, manhwa, and more
Another graphic-focused imprint, Ink Pop, aims to bring international flair to the kids’ graphic novel market with manga, manhwa, and global webcomics aimed at younger readers. The imprint was established in late 2024 under Random House Graphic and is helmed by comics veteran Whitney Leopard.
A devoted manga-phile, Leopard concedes that it’s not always easy for gatekeepers to determine if a comic from overseas is suitable for children, making it difficult for bookstores and libraries to curate selections for kids. Ink Pop will lead with “accepted industry standards when it comes to the U.S. children’s market to make it easier for parents and teachers and booksellers to guide kids in the right direction,” she says. Launch titles include I Wanna Be Your Girl by Umi Takase, which follows a girl whose best friend—with whom she’s secretly in love—comes out as transgender, and My Life as an Internet Novel by Yu Ryeo-Han and A Hyeon, which began as a webtoon, about a girl who wakes up in a fictional love story where she’s the main character’s best friend. “Dani [the protagonist] doesn’t even get to be the main character in her own situation. The series has romance, comedy, drama, and action, but is also a mystery,” Leopard says. “Dani’s stuck between two worlds, which is something that a lot of kids identify with: feeling like they have two versions of themselves.”
Leopard considers it her personal goal to import more and more such “global stories,” she says. “There’s a real hunger for them, and we’ve only tapped into a fraction of the stories that are available. The middle grade graphic novel market continues to do so well because readers are continually looking for themselves in stories. There’s a universality to growing up, and each generation of young readers deals with the same issues but in different ways and with different experiences. It’s why middle grade is such a prevailing industry.”
Middle Grade Mavens
Donna Bray
“Our whole industry should be invested in this reading cohort.”
Maggie Lehrman
“One or two big hits can raise the whole profile of an age group.”
Whitney Leopard
“The middle grade graphic novel market continues to do so well because readers are continually looking for themselves in stories.”
Jenne Abramowitz
“If we want to recapture the attention of the middle grade audience, we have to listen to what they want, and what their choices tell us.”
Eileen Robinson
“The readers are out there; we just have to find them.”
Fun formats
Books have always fought for tweens’ attention, says Jenne Abramowitz, editorial director for Sourcebooks Fire, Young Readers, and Jabberwocky. “As the media they have at their fingertips has evolved from television to video games to YouTube, that fight has only become more pronounced,” she notes. “If we want to recapture the attention of the middle grade audience, we have to listen to what they want, and what their choices tell us. High-interest themes, books that are fun and escapist, short page counts and short chapters, illustrations of every style and format—these are some of the keys.”
Ben Rosenthal and Mabel Hsu, editorial directors of Stonefruit Studio, are excited about the opportunities at their new imprint, which is under the Sourcebooks Young Readers banner. Both were hired away from HarperCollins’s Katherine Tegen imprint—Rosenthal was editorial director and Hsu was executive editor. “We are particularly keen on bringing joy and fun to readers while bridging the literacy gap, so they’re especially focused on unique and hybrid formats, illustrated novels, graphic novels, and shorter page counts,” Rosenthal says. “We know our books are competing for attention with tablets and video games, and we want to create stories and artwork that keep readers coming back to their favorite books again and again.”
Stonefruit Studio’s inaugural list debuts in summer 2026 and includes a spooky middle grade series by two-time Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly and Eliot Schrefer; subsequent seasons include “a wildly reimagined hero’s journey” by Printz Award winner Daniel Nayeri, a graphic novel about a secret organization of pests by Michelle Sumovich, and a graphic novel about a family taking on the Aztec underworld by Yehudi Mercado. “Ben and I have both seen success in this age category and know readers are looking for quality stories across genres that authentically represent their lives, as well as transport takes them to new worlds,” Hsu says.
Reaching reluctant readers
Eileen Robinson, who relocated her Move Books, one of the few Black-owned independent publishers in the U.S., to Charlesbridge Publishing in 2024, rejects the doom and gloom entirely. Charlesbridge Moves, a middle grade line of high-interest, character-driven fiction, was founded with the mission of encouraging reluctant readers to discover reading as an enjoyable leisure activity, Robinson explains. “Sales go down and then everybody is like, Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, but that’s how publishing has always been since I’ve been in it—up and down, up and down. I don’t buy into this narrative at all. I meet so many parents and librarians who are trying to get their kids to read.”
Charlesbridge Moves titles are “an experience for reluctant readers” and inspire readers to engage with books in creative ways, she says; several titles, like Wings to Soar by Tina Athaide, include a poster printed on the back of the book jacket with a QR code that give readers access to activities and additional downloadable art. “Monsters of Fife by Jane Yolen is a hybrid, with prose and graphic novel inserts scattered throughout the book. The Kid by Jeff Schill plays with the fonts and has no pictures, but because of that element, it draws kids in and keeps their interest. Kids have TikTok and video games, and books can’t be that. But we get close enough.”
Robinson exhorts publishing executives to rethink current—often outdated—paradigms of discoverability. “We’re all trying to make kids love reading,” she says. “We get frustrated because things are not going as fast as we want them to go. We have to be patient and do things that we might not normally do. Reach out to the communities, go and sit in classrooms, talk to librarians one-on-one. Kids want content that they care about, that mirrors what’s going on in their lives. This world is throwing a lot at them. Books are that thing that saves us all. They are an escape. They are therapeutic. They give kids knowledge and let them see the perspectives of other children that they may never meet. The readers are out there; we just have to find them.”
