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The grey area between “middle grade” and “young adult” novels is a pretty big overlap. Writer’s Digest says middle grade novels run 20,000 to 55,000 words, and YA fiction is typically 55,000 to 80,000 words. (Read THIS article for lots more details.)

But GRK and many other MG Lit authors seem to use 50,000 to 75,000 words as a benchmark for the middle grade genre. So maybe the goal posts have shifted. (Maybe Harry Potter had something to do with that: The first book in the series was “short” at almost 77,000 words, and the longest title was well over a quarter-million words. J.K. Rowling loves to write books you just can’t read in a single sitting… I’ve finally caught up on her Cormoran Strike series for adults, which have been hovering at around 1,000 pages apiece for the most recent stories.)

Like GRK said, the perfect length for anything is exactly the number of words it takes to tell the story well. The goal is not to add words, it’s to use words wisely. Most authors will cut 10 percent of unnecessary fluff after their first draft. (And their editors may cut another 10 percent….) It actually takes a lot more time to be succinct. A great quote about writing sometimes attributed to Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln is: “I would have written a short message but I didn’t have time, so I wrote a long one.” 

Microsoft Word, Scrivener, Grammarly, and dozens of other writing tools offer a “word count” function. You can see the total number or calculate by paragraph or chapter to help guide you. I suspect @Jade would have better suggestions than I do as she is actively writing and using author tools.