The market for technology can be confusing for parents of young children. There are conflicting studies about the impact of technology upon children, and most people remain apprehensive about exposing their young ones to technology too soon. This apprehension is evidenced by the growth in children’s print book sales worldwide for the past few years.
Total print sales in the US rose two percent, but children’s books was a key component, with a thirteen percent growth. In the U.K. total print sales fell by two percent while children’s books grew by eight percent. In China children’s books sales grew by ten percent. In the last six months of 2014 in Brazil, children’s books were up 28 percent from the year before. Children’s book sales aren’t just increasing because people fear technology. Picture books are important for a child’s educational development.
The Children’s Book Review for Growing Readers provides compelling reasons for parents to read picture books with their kids. Picture books are multi-sensory works that engage children with sight, touch, and sound. Associating pictures with words as well as hearing words repeated increases a child’s learning and retention.
A parent reading a picture book with a child creates an interactive platform for developing knowledge of individual words and the story they build. Be sure to create a fun environment with picture books so reading is not a chore. Chapter books are not necessarily more advanced than picture books, so a child’s increasing reading level does not mean they should stop reading books with pictures altogether.
A webinar hosted by Book Business, entitled “Top Trends in Children’s Literature: Personalized and Interactive Books for the Holidays,” explored changes in the children’s book market. The webinar found children’s print book sales are successful, especially in the newborn to three age range. Television shows, games, and movies associated with books drove juvenile books sales with popular titles like the Divergent series, Minecraft books, and Disney Frozen spin-off titles. The webinar predicted personalized books, like those sold on I See Me!, would be trendy for parents trying to keep their children engaged.
Some parents find it difficult to engage their children with books. Questions remain: Should parents turn to eBooks and tablets next? Should they replace books with technology in the first place? There is no conclusive study about the impact of technology upon new readers, but tablets may be beneficial for targeting learning abilities. It’s trendy for parents to buy eReaders and tablets for young children to encourage reading. It’s true that digital books can be more interactive and targeted to a child’s learning discipline, but eReaders and tablets can fall short when it comes to a child’s attention span. Children can easily navigate to other applications instead of a book.
Digital books vs. print books is not an exclusive decision. Kids benefit from digital books in some ways, but it’s important to expose children to print books first. In the long run, the novelty of technology wears off, and it’s a positive association with print books that helps children.
The choice between print books and digital books is often the focus of debate about children’s literature. Other than the physical presentation of books, there are trends in the content of children’s books. Dystopian adventures and romantic novels are currently popular in juvenile literature. In the plethora of new publications filling the bookshelves it’s easy to see similarities, and in those similarities, we can also see what we lack. Children’s books lack authorship by and content about people of color.
A campaign called We Need Diverse Books crowdfunded through social media and the “WeNeedDiverseBooks” hashtag to raise $334,000 to encourage diversity in publishing employees and interns as well as to honor new authors and publications that focus on diversity.
“Our campaign would not have been as successful as it has been if the tone wasn’t there in the general public already,” said S.E. Sinkhorn, head of publicity at We Need Diverse Books. “We gave it the push and the outlet.”
The publication of books by and about people of color slowly grows, but school library budgets have been slashed since the market downturn in 2008, and government funding continues to decrease. Therefore, newly published books featuring diverse characters and authors often are not represented in schools.
Trends in children’s books change over the years. We hope that diverse literature is no longer a trend but a staple of children’s books. Diversity in content and format is important for a child’s educational development. We are hopeful the push for diversity will encourage more children to love and relate to books.
