The Aardvark Blog

Age recommendations on children's books
5/03/2014

Got a tweet through from Katy Moran a favourite Aardvark author this morning, mentioning a twitter discussion on pros and cons of age advice on children's books. Unsurprisingly this is one of the most commonly asked customer questions in the book shop, and I am afraid that whilst I am generally not in favour of publishers being prescriptive about their books, in this case I am in favour of them including some help for shops and customers.

The reason I am in favour is that actually when people ask me about age suitability they are almost always asking two questions at the same time: firstly, is the text suitable to be read by my x year old, and secondly is the content of the book suitable for my child. The latter is often the more difficult issue, because there are many children who could cope with reading most adult titles, but they are not yet at a stage to process all the issues that such books generate. For this reason I would favour a description which gives an age banding ( preferably quite generous 7-9 not 9 for example ), together with some indication of content: 'fantasy', 'adult social issues' etc.

It is impossible for any bookseller to fully digest the content of every book in their shop ( although there are some of our customers who think that we can  and ask us about how they should look after their aquarium, or the best hotels in Kuala Lumpur - both true questions that have been asked here ). In addition the worst thing that any bookseller could hear from a customer is that they have bought a book which has caused their child distress, or that was in some way or another inappropriate. Good age and content indicatiors on a book will make a bookseller less cautious, and in the end will lead to more books being sold, and hopefully read.