Kindle for children?

[BrightGreenTomatoes]

Any advice? My children are 8 and 11, both prolific readers and my house is being overtaken with books. plus wherever we go I am usually left carrying them. Holidays, train journeys etc. So I thought a kindle for Christmas would be good for both of them but I don’t understand how they work in terms of parental controls and how the purchases are funded, etc.

Ideally I would like to be able to let them buy what they want from their own accounts (they both have debit card type things that I can top up) but would want to have some age restrictions on the type of content they can access. I see that there is a kids kindle, but not sure that would be ok for the older one or whether/how they can purchase additional books beyond the library that you seem to have to subscribe to?

Anyone with experience able to offer thoughts?

they way we use it is I have to buy everything on mine, then you add the kids books to their ‘collection’ and it can then download on their kindle. I am not sure that you can have a kindle set up as a kids kindle and also be anle
to make purchases on it directly.

My DS has a kid's kindle and has done since he was about 8. It is a great device, especially having the dictionary means he can look up words he doesn't know why just clicking on them and the meaning pops up. Also good he can increase font size etc. Great for travel, great for lessening total book clutter at home.

It's a bit of a pain to get the books onto it. Basically DH or I buy the books on our account, then have to go into manage family library and click for the book to go to his kindle. (That's not quite it but it's something like that). I have other friends who decided just to turn off child mode because that's so annoying and that means their children can buy whatever they want, still linked to parents account so (I think) you get an email when a book is bought just as you do when you buy one for yourself. Yes there is a risk that an 8 year old starts reading The Hunger Games or whatever and you only spot it later, but they can't get into nearly as much trouble as on, say, You Tube or Tik Tok.

Thank you. So do you have to have a kindle as well, or does it work via this Amazon household setup thing?

When DD had her kindle (not a success story, she prefers reading paper), I added it to my account and bought the book and got it delivered to her device.
It also worked for KU but the amount of books available was quite limited for her.

You can set up their device that they don't have access to the cloud, I read books I deemed unsuitable for her at that age and didn't want to her being able to just download them.

I find that new releases are very expensive as kindle books, its good as a back up but I found I still bought lots of proper books.

Our solution was a proper cull of books on a regular basis, her using the library a lot more and charity shops.