British Authors Furious Over Age Branding Plan

Posted on June 4, 2008

British authors are furious over a plan to place age ranges on their books. Some parents wanted age guidance for reading material, but the authors think that limits the readership and impinges on their rights.

Philip Pullman, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo and current Children's Laureate Michael Rosen are leading a rapidly growing movement of writers, illustrators, librarians, independent booksellers and others working in children's books to hit back at the publishers forthcoming age-guidance on children's books. Under the campaign slogan "No to Age Banding," the campaign is swiftly gathering signatures.
Introduced for sales reasons following research that showed that consumers wanted some age guidance to help them in choosing books (see our story), the first books are becoming available just as this considerable backlash is launched. Thus far, resistance has been unspoken: several publishers, including Bloomsbury, David Fickling and Walker Books, while not willing to say that they are against age guidance, are not putting the ranges onto their books.
In an unusual breach between publishers and their authors, the opposition campaign leaders seek to "disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures," according to their statement, on the grounds that age guidance is ill-conceived and will damage the interests of young readers. They went on to state a number of reasons against, including stigmatizing readers and their "passionately held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out."

We admit that we'd never even considered this issue. The American children's books we receive almost all have an age guidance. We always assumed the age recommendations were aimed at parents, to give them a heads-up on the reading level of the book, not as some sinister plot to trivialize the books. But we do see the authors' point. Perhaps they could just put the low end of the range on the books? For example, "10 and up" tells us that the child needs to be able to read at a standard 10 year-old reading level to understand the grammar.

Perhaps it's the upper end of the age range that offends? Such as "10 - 12" seems to indicate that if you're over 12 you shouldn't read the book. That's the range for the Harry Potter books and certainly many adults read them. Of course, there could be something else going on here, such as rating the actual content of the books. But we haven't heard that explanation put forward.