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There's this ad running on NPR at the moment, both in their audio programs and on the website that looks a little something like this:

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The audio ad also says pretty much the same thing:

a [...] middle-grade adventure

It sounds awful as ad lingo, especially if you compare it to ads that talk about good things being high-grade.

I'm sure this has to be some writers vernacular though, and I'm guessing they wouldn't advertise their book as mediocre.

What does middle-grade refer to? and when did this terminology come about?

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Middle-Grade refers to the age of the target audience, which are young adults going to middle school, not to the quality of the literary work. For example Wikipedia says (emphasis mine):

The distinctions among children's literature, young adult literature, and adult literature have historically been flexible and loosely defined. This line is often policed by adults who feel strongly about the border. At the lower end of the age spectrum, fiction targeted to readers age 9 to 12 is referred to as middle-grade fiction.

A couple paragraphs later the same article says:

Middle grade novels are typically for the ages of 8–12.

This shows that the boundaries are pretty loosely defined. Something that may be important for this genre is:

Middle grade novels usually feature protagonists under the age of 13, whereas young adult novels usually feature protagonists within the age range of 12–18.

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  • Is this a new term? I don’t remember seeing it used in the past. I thought it was all just grouped under a young adult category.
    – Mou某
    Commented May 29, 2018 at 10:03
  • @user3306356 I couldn't find anything about when it was introduced exactly, but I would say that it's used more as a marketing thing to differentiate your novel from all the other stuff that is for young adults.
    – Secespitus
    Commented May 29, 2018 at 10:41
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The term middle-grade fiction. user asks: "Is it a new term?" and the OP asks "when did it come about?"

Interesting question. Here is an Ngram about that ngram source

Note: searching British English finds no instances of this. So it seems this is primarily an American English usage.

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  • BrE might use middle-school but there are very few local authorities left who operate a three-tier system.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Commented Jun 7, 2018 at 17:16
  • And in Britain they do not call the school years "first grade, second grade, ..., twelfth grade" as they do in the US.
    – GEdgar
    Commented Jun 7, 2018 at 17:21

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