Picture book for middle schoolers?

[pipa4]

Hi there,
my name is Petra. I would very much appreciate your feedback on the following: when do kids outgrow picture books? most picture books are recommended for kids ages 4 to 8. but would your middle school kids be intrigued by a picture book? would they ever even reach for one? chapter books are more their vibe, I have learned:) Thank you so much, I appreciate it. glad to be here :)

Most children outgrow picture books around 7-8 years old. That's not to say there isn't a market for a picture books for older readers but they seem to move on to other forms of picture books, e.g. cartoons, manga or something like The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

There are some picture books aimed at 9+ years old. Locally, we call them 'sophisticated picture books.' If you search that term you might find some?

I know a kids aged 8-10 who would read a picture book at home or have one read in class but would be embarrassed to pick one out of the school library. But by and large as kids develop their reading skills and ability to imagine scenes to go along with books, they move on to chapter books.

There are pop up picture books for older readers but they're usually "display" or novelty books like the Robert Sabuda Alice in Wonderland.

There are even picture books for adults of course - just called "coffee table" books. We have a sci fi picture book series for adults by Simon Stålenhag - Tales from the Loop (the last one, Tales from The Labyrinth, is disturbing as anything I've ever read and definitely for adults/ 16+ ....) The illustrations are integral and well done.

For the 8-10 age group and a little younger there are a plethora of heavily illustrated chapter books in comic book form - from Dog Man and Captain Underpants to Hiro and ones with line drawings like the 13 story treehouse series and the universally known Wimpy Kid, Tom Gates and multiple similar diary serieses. Then of course there are hard back comic books like the Marvel Avengers series- as well as traditional comics Marvel do picture books for age 6+

Big picture books are sharing books and small books are easier to handle for a competent or developing reader reading to themselves - there's good reason books for 8+ readers are conventional paper back book size generally and not A4 sized hardbacks.

Its a well provided for market, though a little niche. I guess there might be market segments not well provided for. Whilst there are no such thing as "books for boys," and "books for girls" it could be argued that more of the comic and illustrated books for readers between 6 and 12 are aimed at stereotypically "boy" interests like superheroes and have male main characters. This may be partly because boys are more often seen as "reluctant readers" who need incentivising to read... So there might be a small underprovided for gap there.

Generally though picture books for older readers do exist but its a niche market.

This is great! Very helpful, thank you very much.

We use picture books throughout primary school. There is a huge amount of learning that can be done using them. For Book Week this year all of our classes used the same picture book (Flotsam) for inspiration for the week's events and literacy learning - it was really interesting to see the different ways that the P1s and P7s had used it. I have also successfully used some of the Anthony Browne books, among others.