Your secondary child isn’t reading for pleasure? You’re not alone
Adapted from the School Library Journal (SLJ) article by Karen Jensen, October, 2023.
Why are our children reading for pleasure less?
The information that follows doesn’t touch on discussions happening about how reading is taught. It also doesn’t dwell on how today’s kids are so over-programmed that they have very little down time to even think about reading for fun and pleasure.
It only scratches the surface on how our constant access to technology changes the landscape of how we spend our free time and engage with the world.
The facts are, that book sales are generally trending down in 2023, for almost all categories.
Reading fiction for pleasure in Middle grade (MG, ages 8-12) and Young Adult (YA, historically classified as 12+, but often now classified as 14+) categories, has been consistently down this year and it is cause for concern.
Recent troubling reports are that kids are reading less for pleasure and that reading scores in general are down.
Some general thoughts about these and related issues in general:
- The internet presents incredible challenges and leads to over-saturation and competition in the market. In addition, discovery of new and relevant titles is harder and many book titles just aren’t available to school libraries.
- There is an ongoing movement from print to digital. This presents many new challenges for libraries.
- There hasn’t been a mega-bestseller since the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter books sold in the tens of millions, while last year’s bestselling author only sold 2.75 million copies. There is no denying the positive impact those that mega-bestsellers have on reading, book sales, and library support and circulation.
- Middle Grade novels are growing increasingly longer, which can be a real hindrance to many readers. We don’t need all the books to be shorter, but we need more shorter books to be an option!
- Middle Grade novels have not had a new break out hit for a while now. While Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dogman continue to do well, there have been no new MG break out hits in several years.
- The phenomenon of “reading decline at 9”, is a noticeable trend of tweens who are no longer reading for fun. In addition, they often don’t have the free time to read. (More on the Decline by 9: https://pjlibrary.org/proof/the-decline-by-nine)
- Teens have fewer age appropriate books that speak to their current lives and issues to choose from, and reading is part of what helps us process and understand our world.
There is some hope in the graphic novel market, which is still popular with MG readers. But as it grows more popular, it grows more flooded and it is hard to find those breakout hits that get kids reading. At the end of the day, we can only do our best to direct our children to suitable books whenever we and they have the opportunity.
