For too many kids, books are uncool and unread

Once upon a slow summertime, unburdened by homework and school reading assignments, kids could be found lounging in hammocks engrossed in reading purely for pleasure. Summer was a time for otherworldly fantasy, Judy Blume and high adventure.

Not anymore. According to new research from Circana, a consumer research firm, middle-grade readers are now the biggest underperforming segment in the American market. “Middle grade,” a term that gets confused with “middle school,” refers to children’s literature — the traditional novels of childhood (“A Wrinkle in Time,” “Wonder,” “The Westing Game”) that lodge in our hearts for a lifetime. These are the books that make us readers.

But kids are reading fewer of them. In the first half of 2024, print sales of middle reader books, intended for children ages 9 to 12, dropped by 5% from the same period the previous year, or 1.8 million fewer units sold, deepening a dip in the market for children’s books that’s held since 2022. Fiction accounted for 71% of the decline. Another worrying study by Scholastic found that reading for pleasure drops steadily as children age, most markedly by age 9, and never recovers.

There are plenty of reasons for the decline. American schools have done a fine job of stripping all the fun out of fiction, emphasizing textual excerpts, nonfiction, close reading, political messaging and the repetitive delineation of symbols, metaphors and other literary devices over the sheer beauty and joy of storytelling.

Discovery is also an issue. Many middle schools have cut back on library volume and hours in favor of technology. In 2022, Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest brick-and-mortar book retailer, announced it would cut back on the number of middle-grade titles in its stores — a decision that was met with outrage and despair by children’s book authors and publishers. The decrease in shelves to roam looks to get only worse. Costco, which heavily discounts children’s books, recently announced that it would no longer sell books year round.

But the most obvious reason for the decline is the onslaught of on-screen alternatives, ever at nearly every child’s fingertips. One in four kids has a smartphone by age 10, and 9 in 10 do by age 14. And as of 2021, 8-to-12-year-olds — the sweet spot for developing a reading habit — spent upward of 5 1/2 hours a day on screens. It’s hard to develop a reading habit when you have no time left to open a book.