5 Ways To Get Kids Back Reading Books
You’re familiar with the doom-laden articles – kids aren’t reading, reading for pleasure is continually falling, what can we do?
There are plenty of fab initiatives at national and local level – especially here in the UK during the National Year of Reading – but I think there are five things we in publishing can do to improve things. I’m focussing here on middle-grade (9-12 year olds), and I’m thinking about the average kid who is generally unenthused about reading in that age group.
We’re battling against screen time, reduced attention spans, and dopamine addictions. (And not just the kids, that’s true of adults too). Changing that is hard, I know we need to do something, but in the meantime, we need to meet these kids where they’re at rather than where we wish they might be.
Now, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for longer, denser, more complex novels – of course there is – the more books the better, so there’s something for everyone. My belief is there needs to be more of what I’m suggesting below, and it needs to be better marketed (rather than just the well-known big name brands in this area) and championed more by the major book awards … because, frankly, if your children’s book award doesn’t have genuinely wide ‘kid appeal’ as one of the criteria, then you’re doing it wrong. I’m tired of seeing shortlists of books that adults love but which the average kid is ambivalent towards, at best. Literally, what’s the point?
I visit around 50 schools every year, so I see firsthand what kids will (and won’t) pick up and read in school libraries. Here’s what I’ve found the average unenthusiastic kid reader needs and what we in publishing need to do:
Make the books they want
Make the books short
Make the books accessible
Make the books easier
Make the books resonate
Make The Books They Want
Murder. That’s one thing they want. This age group are incredibly bloodthirsty. At least, the ones I meet are. If you’re writing murder, you’re onto a good thing. They also love funny. Comedy is always underrated, despite being hard to write, but at least the kids love and appreciate it. Horror is popular. Anything in a diary-format with relatable tween problems is adored too. Graphic novels, comics and anything highly illustrated is a sure-fire hit. Of course, there’s a kid somewhere who will love your book whichever genre or format it is, but those are the ones I’m seeing particularly resonate with the kids right now.
Make the books short
A lot of younger readers are put off by thick spines and word counts over 40K (in middle grade). By ‘put off’ I mean, they won’t even pick them off the shelf. Doesn’t matter how much foil is on the cover. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got sprayed edges. A lot of kids aren’t being read to at night, so these are books they’ll be reading themselves. And they want something shorter. This makes sense. I was a bookish kid, but at 11 and 12 I was reading Choose Your Own Adventure and Nancy Drew (the latter are around 25-30K on average, I think). I graduated to Agatha Christie novels – and her books (40-60K) are short by modern standards too. Somewhere we got obsessed with increasing word length and I think that was a mistake. Check out the Barrington Stoke titles as a prime example of how much you can do with a short word count. Right now, I would say 20-35K is the sweet spot for MG, but that’s just my opinion.
Make the books accessible
We need to think about how much text is on the page, how dense that text is, how much ‘white space’ there is, and whether the text is broken up either through interesting formatting or illustrations. Kids can find large blocks of text incredibly daunting and we need to recognise that. Use of formats like text messages, group chats, web pages, blogs, phone transcripts etc. are great ways to add interest and aid accessibility.
Make the books easier
Choice of vocabulary and sentence structure and length should all be considered. Personally, I always look at the dialogue to description ratio too – and lean more heavily on the dialogue which is snappier to read (and I’ve always found more fun). I’m not advocating for ‘dumbing down’ – I’m making a plea to remember who the books are for and the fact we want them to read FOR PLEASURE. Think about the books you would take on holiday to read for fun. That’s what the kids need. Pure, unadulterated, joyful, thrilling, funny, relatable stories which don’t take too much brain power to decipher. If it feels like hard work to read, we’ve lost. While we’re at it, can we ditch the book snobbery? If I hear the phrase ‘quality children’s literature’ once more, I’ll scream. It’s horribly judgemental, implies everything else is tacky and, again, is more about what adults value, rather than the kids.
Make the books resonate
It’s good to keep an eye on what kids today are dealing with, their experiences, the media they’ve already consumed, and the things they talk about with their mates.
I think there’s too much infantilising of kids. OK, they’re kids, but they don’t like to be treated as kids. Increasingly, I’m meeting voracious readers at the upper end of MG (11 and 12 year-olds) reading adult novels, or older YA, partly due to social media influence, and partly because they want something edgier than what’s on offer in MG. That’s not without its issues and dangers, of course, but there’s a real mismatch here between the sort of content some young readers are looking for and what’s actually available at their reading level.
There will always be arguments about what’s ‘appropriate’ too. The truth is, what’s right for one won’t be for another, and that’s where librarians and booksellers come into their own, getting the right book into the right hands. But the issue isn’t helped by the fact some people have their heads in the sand about what it’s like to be a young person today and refuse to accept things are different from when they were that age.
Ultimately, making a book resonate isn’t just about topics and themes – it’s about speech patterns, sense of humour, vocabulary, friendship dynamics, banter – and really focusing in on what this generation value and how they interact. And if the books don’t resonate? They won’t want to read them. It’s crucial we get this right.
Look, I think we all want the same thing. We know how great books are. How they can entertain us, reduce stress, improve focus, provide an escape, teach empathy, and introduce us to people, experiences and worlds different to our own. Tackling the literacy and reading for pleasure crisis will take a multi-pronged approach with different people playing different roles. It’s worth it. Books are a valuable treasure. And kids deserve to enjoy that treasure too.