Katherine Applegate is the best middle grade fiction author by AR

Katherine Applegate is the best middle grade fiction author

Katherine Applegate is THE BEST middle grade fiction author ever. In 2025 when I was 10 I met Katherine. She was doing a meet and greet with her co-writer Gennifer Choldenko for their book DogTown. Gennifer was interviewing Katherine at that specific meet and greet. She asked her how long she had been writing. She said something along the lines of that she had been writing for too long to count. She also mentioned that she was a ghostwriter for the book series’ The Sweet Valley Twins, Girl Talk, a lot of different animal books, and even Disney books like The Little Mermaid! 

Katherine and Gennifer’s series DogTown has 3 books (at the time of this essay only 2 were published) these books had 1 year to be done then they moved on to the next book. The books were released in September of 2024, 2025, and 2026. Originally Katherine was supposed to write in the perspective of Chance the real dog and Gennifer was supposed to be writing in the perspective of Metal Head the robot dog, but eventually it got really messy and they ended up writing in the same chapter in one dog’s perspective.

Katherine also mentioned that she was writing a series with her husband. That series was the Animorphs in which there are 54 main books and other prequels and sequels. This series took them 5 years to complete the main novels. They wrote a book a month and roughly 6 pages a day for 24 days, took a couple days for planning and then started on the next book. 

I have to mention her book Wishtree because it is my favorite book that she has ever written. Wishtree was published in the summer of 2016. The book only took her 2-3 months to write, edit, revise, the entire process only took her 2-3 months and it is an amazing book! Her deep frustration with global events fueled her writing. She just wanted people to listen. Her poetic way of writing this book helped it flow. This is my favorite Katherine Applegate book!

All of these series and books show that Katherine puts a lot of time and effort into her work. She took 5 years writing the Animorphs series, 3 years writing the dog town series, 7 years in total ghostwriting, and more from all of the other books I couldn’t mention. In all she has spent 38 years writing. This is why Katherine Applegate is THE BEST middle grade fiction author.