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I don't understand why they're freaked out by book length. A kid can read one 300-page book or six 50-page books and it's the same amount of reading. Scholastic's bread and butter has traditionally been long, LONG series of relatively short children's books; it's known that bookworm kids like to read a lot. Nobody blinks an eye at a kid reading all sixty-ish Animorphs books or a bookshelf's worth of Goosebumps or The Babysitter's Club. But if the pages are stuck together into thicker books then suddenly that's difficult for a kid? 300 pages isn't even all that big for children's fantasy.

the thing about media literacy is that understanding why the author chose to specify that the curtains are blue is the same skill set as understanding that the way the author characterizes all black characters as angry or all chinese characters as meek and silent is racist. it is the same skill set as being able to identify when a news source is biased or when someone is feeding you propaganda. the ability to ask "why did this person choose to present this premise in this specific way?" is a critical skill in a world full of misinformation. why are the curtains blue? maybe it's a characterization detail. maybe it's extraneous worldbuilding. why is this character written as being right all the time? maybe you're intended to disagree with them. maybe it doesn't matter. maybe you should still ask why.