To ask if I'm the only one to be appalled by the general calibure of children's literature in libraries

[AWitchCalledMeg]

I know we are lucky to have libraries. I am grateful and do support our libraries. My four children and I visit five libraries local to us on a regular basis of which span three counties between them (we live on the border of several counties). But over the years I have become more and more saddened by quality of books available. My children are all under 7 so can't comment on books for older children. What is the process on how the books are selected? I would estimate 85% of the books are so so inane, dumbed down and stupid, 12% is the modern generic Julia Donaldson type fodder and then 3% are the rare gems which are actually good. Surely I can't be the only one to have noticed this? So many books they have available there I can't believe they were ever published and surely they would never sell in the shops.. perhaps that's why they are in the library? So many studies show that children are reading less than ever.. how can they hope to change this when so much utter tosh is being put out there?

What have you got against Julia Donaldson, OP? I think she’s absolutely brilliant.

Julia Donaldson is a brilliant poet. I love her books.

Our library is amazing and my boys (coming up 4 and 7) love it. They never struggle to find a book they like.

Agree that some of the books ds1 comes home with from school are dire though. He's almost a free reader thank god. So over Biff, Chip and Kipper!

OP have you used the book sorter website? Or asked for specific books to be ordered in? It's free for us to do that here (SW England).

Our library has a pretty good selection, with plenty of good comic books. DS, aged 8, has a comedy retelling of several Shakespeare stories, an Evil Emperor Penguin comic book, a book about dinosaurs, and a Famous Five book. DD, aged 11 has a couple of Rumer Godden novels, something trashy set in a stage school and a book about how to crochet. I have a book of Russian History, a regency romance novel, and a couple of other novels.

Agree about the comic books. When we were little we all read Buster, Whizzer and Chips, Beano etc. Do kids even do that these days?

Try some non fiction on topics your kids are into. I find that much more interesting than a lot of story books.

As a (very) small, independent publisher, I can tell you that, from my experience, libraries don't have the budget to purchase new titles/stock. They rely on donations, and if every child only knows of Walliams' latest, or the latest Wimpy Kid (for example), local libraries will be overrun with similar titles.

I love seeing younger readers picking up books from brand-new authors; it encourages diversity in their reading tastes and they may discover a true gem. Every author has to start somewhere, and it's so frustrating watching talented writers trying, and largely failing, to break into a saturated children's fiction market that's smothered in books from large publishers who can afford thousands in advertising fees. Just my two'penneth 😊

What’s a library?!

Oh yeah one of those book lending places that our town no longer has due to lack of funding

Ours is excellent. The staff really care about nurturing a love of reading and work hard to achieve this.

We also use the request system though, and I've noticed that after requesting books from a certain author or genre, similar titles start appearing on the shelves before long, which is great.

Not sure what the problem is with julia donaldson though - dc1 loves her books and has read several so many times she knows them by heart. Any book that a child loves to read that much is fine by me!

Our library is wonderful-a great selection of stories and non-fiction texts. I guess it really depend on the area, funding, and specific staff.

There are bad children's books, but if the children enjoy them then they are doing their job. If the children do not enjoy them, then choose different. As you said, there are a lot out there.
It is a sad fact, as others have pointed out, libraries now lack staff especially enough expert ones.

It used to be a librarians job to keep up to date with the latest and best books, to select the stock and support readers.
I think some areas do still employ qualified librarians, some actually have specialist children's librarians and a few authorities do have a reasonable budget to enable them buy new, quality children's books.

Sadly, libraries have been so underfunded for so many years this is not the case in most areas now.

As cool girls said "maybe your librarians got replaced by volunteers". I know ours have. In fact I think there are now only two qualified librarians in the whole county. (to cover the 30 odd libraries that are still open) I know the head of libraries in our county covers a wide range of other leisure facilities and has no library experience.

The libraries are now staffed mainly by untrained but enthusiastic volunteers, with occasional oversight by overworked library assistants and tourist information officers. There is no budget for newspapers or magazines and only a very limited budget for adult and children's fiction books.

It has been suggested that all our libraries should close and there should be a limited borrowing facility available in some shops. (any grannies on here remember this happening back in the 1950's ?)

It's a grim situation and one that concerns me a lot.

Julia Donaldson fodder ? She’s a genius and her books are amazing

I can't get past the Julia Donaldson thing.

She us a fucking legend

Our inner city library was good until it was closed by austerity cuts.

In our area, the library and librarians are absolutely fantastic. I’m always impressed by the range of books and the activities on offer - they have Lego clubs, arts and crafts, storytelling etc. My kids are both massive book worms and both always find things they enjoy at the library. I suspect funding cuts are behind it in areas where this isn’t the case.

To me it's all about what the child wants to read. It's fine for adults to have ideas about what's "good" and what's not but the only thing that matters is that ids read for pleasure.

I spent all my primary school years deep in Malory towers and Nancy Drew - my parents and teachers begged me to read "better" books but I didn't want to, I loved the worlds of Nancy Drew and Malory towers.

Ours is also fab. DS1 ordered the new philip pullman last week and picked it up today. If they don't have a book they'll probably have it elsewhere in the county and get it sent over or else they will put it on the purchase suggestion list.

I'm a librarian and we have a limited budget to work with. We also need books that will last well, without dating easily, so more 'generic' stories are sold fairly cheaply to us. In our library system, we have a children's librarian and she's pretty damn good. We have a good selection I think, and books that are often rotated between libraries so there's always new stock on the shelves, but honestly library budgets have been cut to the bone. It's hard deciding what to request and what not, and we are constantly having to send data across to the council - if loans/library usage, etc falls, we risk losing our libraries.

I have to say I've been thoroughly impressed with ours. Maybe we just got lucky. (As for school books I'd like to strangle bloody biff & chip with their stupid magic key, and now suffering the older reader version where they are finding virons but that's another matter all together)

You can always request books as well. Ask about that in your local library. And if you really want to help, become a volunteer. Many of our frontline staff are doing the jobs of librarians, and we rely on volunteers to tidy, shelve, talk to customers, etc.

Ours has recently been taken over by volunteers, so far its still great, under 8 for us, not sure about older kids books, we regularly bring home too many to carry. I didn't think about how donations may be welcomed so thanks to whoever mentioned it I will see if they'd like some of our outgrown books x

I stopped using ours a few years back, as they replaced the very lovely and informative staff in there with automatic machines and a russian assistant who barely spoke English. It was like a comedy show trying to explain what you wanted. They've now filled it with PCs for internet use rather than books, and it seems so utterly impersonal. As for the quality of the books, I am convinced they were all donations from random publishing houses to get new "authors" (if you can call them that) out there....... the only mainstream fiction were always "fastbacks" and I hated only taking one book at a time as it was a 12 round trip out of the way. My DDs just gave up trying to find decent teen fiction too. We just started buying 2nd hand stuff on Amazon and the girls used to swap loads with friends.

of course books aimed at under 7s are going to seem silly to an adult but that's because they're for small children who generally aren't interested in serious literature when they could be reading fun stories

I disagree, there are plenty of books I enjoy reading to DS - Hairy Mclary and Slinky Malinki for example, or the "Oi" books, just bought him "Oi! Cat" and we love it.

Ooh I loved Hairy mclairy