Sprayed edges—better-known as the province of deluxe YA and adult fantasy editions and BookTok collector culture—are making a colorful splash in middle grade. Publishers are giving mysteries, fantasies, and ghost stories patterned page edges and other premium design treatments in an effort to make books feel like objects worth coveting at a moment when the category continues to search for new readers.

“Middle graders are looking for different ways to engage with the story,” said Lindsay Currie, author of The Secret Bookstore Sleuth Society (Sourcebooks, Sept.), a series starter about four best friends who are trapped in a book-themed inn and who must use their special skills to figure out who killed one of the regular customers. In Sleuth Society, the sprayed edges aren’t simply decorative. Yellow motifs embedded in the bookshelf pattern reference objects tied to individual characters, extending the mystery beyond the text. The novel also includes a character gallery to help readers keep track of suspects and sleuths.

“I think readers are going to be very excited,” Currie said. She noted that the team aimed to create “a book to carry around and show off—anything to get middle graders hyped to read.”

Kate Messner’s Keep the Ghost Light On (Bloomsbury, Feb. 2027)—a multimodal novel about three theater-loving middle school kids who sneak into a shuttered Broadway theater that is haunted by the ghost of an angry showgirl—combines prose with theatrical scripts, song lyrics, text messages, letters, photographs, and illustrations. Messner, who devotes much of the year visiting schools, questions the narrative that middle grade readers have disappeared altogether. “I spend so much of my time in elementary schools and middle schools talking with fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth graders who are actually really in love with stories,” she said. The challenge, she argues, is meeting young readers where they are.

“The story is there,” she said of her new book, “but it also feels very approachable. There’s a little more white space [on the page]. There’s a little more interaction in the way you engage with the text.” For Messner, the physical book itself is part of that storytelling experience. The stenciled edges on Keep the Ghost Light On offer visual clues to the mystery inside, rewarding observant readers before they even crack the cover. “When you love a story,” she said, “you can look at a book and recognize that somebody else loved that story, too, and believed in it. Readers love when the physical object feels just as special as the story inside.”

Sprayed edges are also in part a strategic response to a middle grade market that has weathered years of declining sales.

After seeing sprayed edges help Blood in the Water, Tiffany D. Jackson’s 2025 middle grade debut, stand out on shelves—and debut on the New York Times bestseller list—the team at Scholastic decided to repeat the treatment for Ghost in the Night, which released earlier this month. “We wanted to make it feel distinct from what else is out there,” said Aimee Friedman, editorial director at Scholastic Press. “We wanted to make Ghost in the Night special.”

Friedman believes the appeal is partly tied to the increasingly physical nature of books in a digital world. “We’re competing with screens,” she said. “To make a book this beautiful, collectible thing feels right for the moment.”

The investment also reflects the realities of bookselling. Premium production values help justify hardcover prices and give booksellers another point of distinction in crowded displays. Bloomsbury publishing director Mary Kate Castellani views the embellishments as one more tool to convert browsers into buyers. “We’re giving booksellers what they need to make a sale,” she said. “When you’re standing there looking at a bunch of books on a table, sprayed edges can call attention to a book. It sends a signal to a kid: ‘Pay a little extra attention to this one.’ ”