What do your children like to read?

[RachaelMac]

Hi there,

My name is Rachael and I'm a student studying publishing at university. I have been tasked with an assignment to source an out of copyright text and market it to an aged 5-12 demographic. In order for a text to be out of copyright the author has to deceased for 70+ years.

Are there any particular genres your children enjoy reading? Or is there a gap in the children's fiction market you think that needs to filled?

Any insights and thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

My dd is at the top end of your range, 12 going on 13. I'd say she has no problems finding books that she enjoys reading, she likes adventure, YA dystopia, lots of things.

I think at the moment the pre-teen market is very heavily skewed towards fantasy and adventure. Once they get a little older and are happy to read relationship based books there's more of the John Green Fault in our Stars type real life novels.

DD's friend hates fantasy, and isn't really at the stage of being interested in relationships, I know he does sometimes struggle to find things, and reads a lot of older novels.

If I were trying to pick out gaps in the market, I'd say at the younger end of your range there's a shortage of 'books where nothing happens' suited for reading out loud or for young fluent readers - the Milly Molly Mandy type book with low threat (there was a thread on this a little while back).

A bit older, as I said above, the gap is for real life non fantasy novels that aren't mainly relationship based, if that makes sense.

Thanks, that's helpful!

My daughter is 7 and she enjoys things like the secret seven, the worst witch and Molly Molly Mandy. She is enjoys adventure/mystery/school stories but with only mild peril or scariness....

deceased for 70+ yrs, crikey, that's tonne be a tough call.
I tried Tom Sawyer on my bookworm DS but he couldn't get the old-fashioned foreign speech at all.
I wanted to say Charlotte's Web my 10yo just read, but author not dead so long. That's your problem, everything with an author dead 70+ yrs ago will be written in hopelessly different form of English.