Violence, sex, and language. While books for younger kids don’t have graphic violence, sex, or language, many do include cartoon-like violence, crushes and flirting, and name-calling and insults. Books for tweens start getting edgier, with swear words and slurs, violence and gore, teen relationships, and more. For example, The Thickety: A Path Begins is a brilliant witch tale labeled for kids age 8–12 that we gave 5 stars, but with its vivid violence, we aged it for 11 and up. And things get even more intense as you move up the age range, especially the sexual content, with underage sex, teen pregnancy, abortion, and graphic love scenes in some story lines. Common Sense Media offers expert guidelines for the level of violence, sex, and language that’s developmentally appropriate for every age, but you may need to make a judgment call for your own child, based on your own values. Don’t mind a few F-words? Many tween and teen books have ’em. OK with some epic sci-fi violence? Then give the go-ahead to alien-invasion tale The 5th Wave.
Consumerism. Product placement isn’t only in movies — it’s in kids’ literature too. Sometimes it’s appropriately used for scene setting, but sometimes, as in Ghostgirl, it can seem like a never-ending stream of ads. Some teen books are as packed with high-status products as those mentioned in many commercial rap songs (Cristal champagne, Patron tequila, BMW and Mercedes cars, Louis Vuitton bags). Consumerism in a book doesn’t disqualify it from being worthwhile, but it’s an important aspect to keep in mind and to talk to your kids about. Train them to be on the lookout for it, and they’ll learn some valuable media-literacy skills.
Drinking, drugs, and smoking. The presence of these substances in books is sometimes crucial to the story line (for example, in The House of the Scorpion), essential for historical accuracy (as in The Great Gatsby), or related to a key character trait (as with Captain Haddock in Tintin). But there are plenty of examples of gratuitous drinking, drugs, and smoking (in the Gossip Girl books, for example) being portrayed as humorous and relatively consequence-free. We offer guidelines for what’s developmentally appropriate for every age, but you may need to make a final call for your kids based on what amount you’re OK with. And any time substance use or abuse comes up, take the opportunity to discuss the issue with your kids.
User reviews. Sometimes it takes a village to figure out which books are right for our kids. If you’re on the fence, see what other parents — and even kids — are saying. Although our user community’s ratings are based on personal opinion rather than developmental guidelines, they do rate books using the same tools that our editors do, with icons to flag areas of concern, stars to signal overall quality, and a target age to help you decide.
The bottom line is that it’s up to you to do your research on what books will be appropriate for your own kids and apply it to your family and remember to check the ratings.
