Can you swear in children's books?

[Wavyheaded]

I'm writing a fantasy story but from the perspective of animals and they swear in their heads.. I know it sounds weird, but I want to keep the swear words - should I aim it for adults? I doubt most adults will take it seriously! But I'm loathe to take out the swearing as some of my characters WILL swear, as it's in their personality.. am I overthinking everything? I want it to be a children's story, not adults..

I would be disappointed to say the least if there was swearing in books I’d bought for my children.

If you want to go down the traditional route, then no, of course you can't swear in a book intended for children!

Have you actually read books in the age group you want to write for?

It's confusing really as you don't seem to know the difference between a book for adults and a book for children! Everything is different - the plot, story arc, character development etc.

No, you can't

What age are you aiming at? I'm not arsed about swearing but I would not be reading it to my child

Wouldn’t animal swears be different to human swears? Make up some swears.

One of the things you have to consider is, "If a customer buys my book, what else might he/she buy?"

It's what Amazon is so good at - when you buy a book there you can see what other customers bought.

You really need this firmly in your mind before you start to write a book, and you should do a lot of research in those other books so that questions like this are cleared up in advance.

Depends on their age, what is the target age for your story?

If it's aimed at under 13's then no, don't put any swearing in. Older than that go for it but try not to make it gratuitous. Charlie Higson seems to get it about right in his zombie apocalypse books (The Enemy and others).

I'm not sure about your future success as an author if you are unable to grasp that you can't swear in children's books. YA then yes - to a point

Do you mean primary age children or teens? You can have swearing in a YA book (my DS it reading The Hate U Give) but not a kids' book.

No you can’t put swear words in. But you don’t need to. A lot of kids books have ‘swearing’ e.g. ‘Bob called Bill a word that made his mother send him up to bed...’ or even ‘Ben said a word that rhymes with duck and everyone went quiet...’ (you can be much more fun and clever about it, they’re crap examples ) you spot a lot of this in the HP books or Jaqueline Wilson stories. Adults will understand straight away, some kids will, and you leave it up to the imagination.

What do you class as swearing? My ds picked up ‘bloody hell’ from Harry Potter, also noticed the word ‘git’ in there. This may not have been published like that nowadays though.

Probably best to find a mild replacement for the swear words.

Teens wouldn’t bother me. Younger children it would.

Bear in mind even at year 6 my Ds occasionally read to the teacher.

I also think quite unnecessary. I work in a job where I am not able to swear ( young children) so tbh I don’t swear in my head express myself differently.

Depends what the word is surely.

I always loved Ron Weasley saying 'bloody hell'.

In Harry Potter they say Bloody Hell!

But that's only in the later books, @bobstersmum, when the books are aimed at an older readership.

I think in the Father Christmas (Raymond Briggs) cartoon he uses bloody or similar which surprised me as a child.

If it's teens- fine but if it's for primary school or younger then no.

13+ I'd say light swearing is fine. Below that nothing other than damn or good lord

Or does he use blooming Christmas - can't remember!

I used to tell ds off for saying 'crap'. No you cant. And I don't like blasphemy either.

@Howtotrainyourhamster bitch is also in hardy potter, as is arse several times

I seem to recall the seagull in Watership Down swearing. It put quite a few parents off.

I say "No". I use bad language occasionally but would never have done so in front of children.

There are other words you can use. Children will encounter the swearing ones soon enough, they don't need to hear it from parents.

(My son, aged 2, picked up two things from me which I never dreamed he would - mild by today's standards but still unacceptable/unusual from yourng children. Another post/thread for those if wanted but not a big deal in scheme of things.)

In Harry Potter the most frequently seen instances of swearing are "Ron called malfoy a name he would never have said in front of his mother" or "Harry swore as he dropped the book on his toe", that kind of thing. I actually have another book about the writing of it and either her or her editor, I'm not sure, crossed out a mild swearword, with a note like "A 14 year old would say something stronger" and I think it was replaced with a sentence like the above.

Nope. No swearing in children's books. Had one kid come up to me the other day scandalised by a bad word in a school library book. It was 'idiot'.