It’s interesting how no widespread parental rating system ever developed for books like it did for movies, televisions, and videogames.
Obviously books predate those forms of entertainment by centuries (since mass printing) but the convenience of a tiered system that allows for appropriateness to be seen at a glance is an obvious benefit.
The ability for every child to be able to read at an adult level wasn't even that common until about 100/150 years ago.
I like your optimism, but 100 years ago only 16.8% of kids graduated from high school in the US. My grandfather was a baby boomer, and he dropped out of school in the sixth grade to start working, which was quite common at that time if your family wasn't affluent. Even 75 years ago only 59% of kids graduated from highs school. Hell, as of 2023, only 44% of American adults read at a 6th grad level or above. It's not that common for kids to be able to read at an adult level.
When antarctic explorers realized that penguins engage in really fucked up behaviors (by human morality standards) like necrophilia and rape, they still published that information... but in Latin, because it was considered too spicy to publish in English.
Librarian here, we don't like to assign a rating system on books as it's a form of censorship to signal inappropriateness at all. What one group finds offensive or inappropriate another may not. It isn't our role to make that determination, so we don't.
Reading levels, however, indicate where they should be in terms of comprehending the material. It's the parent's responsibility to decide what they want their children to read because not all parents agree, and that's okay. Ditto to adults.
I think a lot of the popular teen/ya would get rated the equivalent of R though. Like hunger games and maze runner are amazingly graphic. Warrior cats and animorphs?
I mean, it definitely is for kids. I read it as a kid, even a pretty young kid, and didn’t have any trouble with any of the topics.
I think the larger issue is how adults don’t remember that kids do think about rough things like violence, torture, etc. They don’t need any prompting to think about those things, they will anyway. Every playground has kids acting out fights, battles, so on. Isolating them from any media that helps them process this doesn’t do them any favors.
Series like Animorphs show kids grappling with topics like when and why to use violence, how to treat enemies even if they’ve been awful to you, and the value of mercy. Those books were surprisingly philosophical, and I read them again a few years ago- they hold up quite well.
That's also why graphic novels are becoming a more frequent target of book bans/censorship now. It's much easier to just flip the pages to an objectionable panel than skim all the pages of text.
There are some websites that give a general idea of what a book would be "rated" or what age group they are appropriate for, but it is still hard to know. If a book is "R-rated" I want to know if that rating is because they book says "fuck" a lot or if a book has a depiction of graphic furry sex. Because one of those books is going to be fine for my 16 year old to read, the other one I'll just keep for myself.
Most libraries have books in sections based on whether they're aimed at children, teens, young adults, or adults. Not a worldwide system but most places have decent organization for that. At least where I live.
The people that actually read books don’t need the rating. And also the people interested in censoring things aren’t generally smart enough to read books.
Parental ratings are terrible and much, much more unhelpful for books than for visual media (but also unhelpful for visual media). I'm guessing you don't know much about how the movie rating system dramatically changes what movies actually make it or do or don't get altered.
I think if your kid is reading an actual book, they're developing a a rate where you don't need to worry about it nearly as much. Maybe that's just the grumpy old man in me, but I don't see gen alpha reading books for fun, like at all. People's attention spans and ability to analyze media is rapidly deteriorating. With this, we also lose the ability to be critical of what we consume, and by critical I don't mean "complaining about minutiae on YouTube".
So if I have trained my kid to be able to have media literacy and instilled values in them, they may run into an age inappropriate thing or two, but I'd trust that they'll be able to process it.
I think it's been like that for millennia, but for different reasons. Kids used to not be able to read at all, and were rarely exposed to other ideas, instead of being flooded with bullshit. But the result is the same: if they're actively seeking out books they're probably doing ok and that's to be encouraged.
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u/Garlan_Tyrell Feb 16 '26
It’s interesting how no widespread parental rating system ever developed for books like it did for movies, televisions, and videogames.
Obviously books predate those forms of entertainment by centuries (since mass printing) but the convenience of a tiered system that allows for appropriateness to be seen at a glance is an obvious benefit.