Scholastic – The Scriblerians

2015 is shifting into gear, but while most are looking forward to what’s around the corner, I spent some time analyzing a 2014 Scholastic survey concerning kids’ reading habits.

I skimmed over the report with mild interest, but a few points caused me to stop and reflect. While I predicted a few of their findings, some were not at all what I expected.

The part of the survey that immediately perked up my ears, being a writer, was what kids wanted in books. We spend long hours trying to predict this very thing so I fast-forwarded to this part. Little surprise that 70% of kids (more in the 14 and below age group) prefer books with humour, and less surprise that most wanted to read a mystery, or at least about a problem that needed to be solved by the main characters. Hence the popularity of Harry Potter, Captain Underpants, Diary of A Wimpy Kid and the Percy Jackson books.

Teens that were 14 and up seemed to still enjoy a laugh but appreciated books that had romance and/or helped them forget about real life for a while. Hence, the popularity of Hunger Games, Divergent and Twilight. But one of the biggest sellers was the Harry Potter series. Still! That caught me off guard. Not that they aren’t good books, but that teens still read them.

There were interesting but predictable findings about what makes frequent readers and how many books are read by different categories of readers, but what made me take another glance were the surveys concerning e-readers. From 2010 to 2014, there was a 40% increase of kids who’d read e-books. That wasn’t a big ‘ahaa moment’ for me, but what I saw next, was.

77% of kids from 6 – 17 said that most of the books they read were print books, and furthermore 65% would read print books even if e-books were available. I figured that most kids would far rather be reading on screens of some kind. Is this because kindles, and e-readers are not as available to kids that age?

I like to think that maybe I’m not as old fashioned as I thought I was. I still like to curl up and finger the pages of a book, breath in the smell of a new book, and keep them on my shelves as old friends that I like to visit every now and then.