Word Count?

The number I've seen for transitional chapter books is 10-20K. But take that with a grain of salt since it's not my specialty.

If you go to AgentQuery.com and select childrens fiction for your search, you will find many that handle both ya and childrens or some that handle just ya.
early readers usually fall under the childrens heading, at least as much as I have been able to find. There is thread hear on agents check it out

To me, middle grade is for the 8-12 age group, when they are more confident readers. Early readers are short chapter books for the 6-9 age range mostly.

I have to say that there is a huge age difference in 8-12. 3rd graders and 7th graders are worlds apart. early reader is 1-2 grade. In 3rd they are often called "transitional reader." These kids are making a jump from early reader to middle grade. "Chapter book" can be "early reader" or "transitional readers."

I've been surfing the publishers sites a lot and that is what it seems like to me. I would look at the sites and at agents sites. They give you a pretty good idea of what is out there. Another resource is to find a good library or book seller. Find some books comparable to yours. Find a senior employee who knows what is going on and ask how they would categorize those books. Someone there orders those books and will know how the publishers categorize them.

I notice that Moondance is from UK and I am from USA so the categories may differ. Terminology probably depends on what side of the ocean you are from.

ETA-Not sure if I answered your Q. I would query it as simply "chapter book geared to 2nd-3rd graders." An agent will know what to call it.

Hey I think I may have posted this link somewhere else, so my apologies if others have seen this before, but this is an article from a website called www.write4kids.com and they have a lot of good stuff. One article I think answer yours question in pretty good detail: http://www.write4kids.com/colum44.html.

Hope this helps!

What an awesome link. I've never seen it broken down the way they do. Thank you, Toothpaste!

ETA- Do you mind putting it in the sticky at the top of children's? The one marked toolbox? It's a great one to share.

Just curious. Anyone know the word count for the Lemony Snickett books. Average?

Here is a great site. Renaissance Learning:

http://www.renlearn.com/store/quiz_home.asp

Type in the name of the book you want to know about and it will give you word count and target age! It's for teachers, but it is very helpful.

Ha, you know what K-Mark, I have actually myself sat quietly in my room several times trying to average out words to page of the Lemony Snickett books to answer that very question! So using my poor math skills (saying 10 words per line, and 22 lines per page, times number of pages, so this is REALLY approximate): the first book comes to around 35 000 and the penultimate one around 77 000. So he's got a kinda JK Rowling thing with the writing increasing (though in miniature).

But I do think there is a website out there that someone once directed me to, where you can search a book and it tells you the number of pages. Anyone know where that is?

Ah! I am such an idiot, so did not read Soccer Mom's reply to K-Mark. And that answers my question too! Sorry 'bout that!

I write Level 4 readers for this age group. They run between 1200 to 1500 words and do not contain chapters. Transitional chapter books for this age group usually run between 3000 to 5000 words.

Some great info in this thread--I thought I'd bump it.

Brilliant thread. Thank you.