Quality of Children's books...

[IADad]

We (parents) must be not only a huge market but apparently an easy one as well.

I've noticed that so many children's books are really pretty crappy. And this extends from toddler books on up. So, I'd like you introduce you to the solution. My own line of children's books...hahahaha, just kidding, as I wrote it felt like one of those posts the spammers write.

anyway, they're just sloppy. There's no editing, there are typos, misuses of grammar and unecessarily confusing words.

So, DS2 (6 yo) is reading 2nd/ 3rd grade level now, although he gets tired after about a chapter and gets a little sloppy. So, last night we were reading from a book of 10 stories we had gotten him and in one story there was a word completely missing, there was a sentence fragment passed off as a sentence, two sentences that start with "And" (which although not necessarily grammatically incorrect, still mighty confusing for young readers. A couple of words that I thought were unnecessarily challenging (i.e. they could have used other replacement words.) at least one sentence ending in a preposition (okay, not a mortal sin, but come on, we're trying to teach young readers right?) and the most egregious, one blatantly sexist remark about "girls not understanding fishing...." wtf? All in all I was left feeling like they should have been paying me, rather than me buy this thing from them.

Am I wrong that I should expect more from the written word I buy? Anyone have a source for consistently good writing? Seriously all they'd have to do is spend a half hour editing to fix these things.


Oh, and on a side note, if I hear either of my kids say "These ones" one more time the top of my head is going to blow clean off....there, I feel better.

 

[mom2many]

I can tell you the only time I notice typo's is a misspelling or a missing word, and this isn't just in children's books either, adult books are equally as bad.

Since sentence structure has never been my forte, unless it's a blatant mistake that literally jumps off the page and bitch slaps me....I wouldn't notice it.

I do hear you though

 

[Xero]

I do occasionally notice things in our children's books that bug me, but I can't remember anything specific, certainly not anything as bad as what you are describing. However, we are still on the simple stuff as my kids are still so little and Eli is only just starting to read some. We aren't into chapter books or anything like that. I imagine it will get worse when those come around for us.

I do notice mess ups in the books I read all the time though, drives me nuts haha. I swear every book I read I find at least one. It's like, really? Isn't somebody getting paid to make sure these aren't here? lol

 

[akmom]

Geez, what are your kids reading? All my daughter's books are fine! Frog and Toad, Morris the Moose, Biscuit, Junie B. Jones... all great series for new readers. Do you have the "I Can Read" books? Many levels, all grammatically acceptable (as far as I can tell).

 

[IADad]

Oh, this is some "10 Stories for Boys" book we got as a kindle book. I've noticed some others. We have some in the Scooby Doo series of "I can read" or whichever series they are a part of (I can never remember which of the series' is which) that had some really bad sentence structure.

I guess I have no one to blame but myself, I should just return them as defective....hahaha

If no one complains, why would they put the extra 30 minutes into editing.

 

[cybele]

I asked my husband about this and he said that ebooks have different publishing standards (ie: lower) so they are more likely to have errors. Also, many are not linked with actual publishing houses, they are done through small home businesses, so they are more prone to errors.

The I can Read style books are not reading books exactly, I don't know if you guys have a name for them but here we call them "easy readers" their purpose is word identification and comprehension, not sentence structure or storyline.

 

[akmom]

What do you mean? I'm captivated by the storylines in Frog and Toad!

 

[IADad]

I asked my husband about this and he said that ebooks have different publishing standards (ie: lower) so they are more likely to have errors. Also, many are not linked with actual publishing houses, they are done through small home businesses, so they are more prone to errors.

The I can Read style books are not reading books exactly, I don't know if you guys have a name for them but here we call them "easy readers" their purpose is word identification and comprehension, not sentence structure or storyline.

That's good information. I guess I've been lax in my duties as a consumer. I should be writing critical reviews and complaining to Amazon when they sell substandard stuff.

I understand that easy readers are all about word identification, but I don't thin that should give them license to do it wrong, when they could just as easily do it right?

 

[adoptive dad]

I'm with you M2M adult books are just as bad. Now I'm a crap speller definatly by our American users spellings (sorry I'm a colour man not color man). I'm pretty sure definatly is spelt wrong (but I can't decide on which way looks right to me so feel free to correct). Thing is Fern is just as hpeless at spelling - we're a very creative couple. I can always see it in other peoples work I just can't tell anyone how to correct it most of the time. As for 'easy readers' as you say you call them in Australia I believe are called comprehension books over here and a friend of mine who is a primary teacher says that here in the UK its a part of the English curriculum.

 

[cybele]

They're part of the curriculum because they develop reading comprehension, too many kids know how to read, but don't understand what it is they're reading.
My husband is a library manager one and of his branches has a reading recovery group on weekends for teenagers and adults who can read but cannot comprehend, it's quite a wide-spread problem, and it's usually boys who have this problem, just because it's more 'acceptable' for girls to spend more time reading.

I'm another one who spells with British English (95% of the time I guess, I assume many Americanisations slip into there though from exposure) and I spell it 'definitely'.

Once I went with Sunny's class a few years ago on an excursion to Old Melbourne Gaol (which is closed, they weren't playing with the prisoners, haha, and is now an educational tourism spot) and so many of the kids didn't know what g-a-o-l meant, because they were so used to seeing it spelled j-a-i-l. Their teacher was horrified.

 

[Xero]

As far as I know, it is spelled definitely (that's how I spell it, and how my autocorrect seems to like it spelled, at least lol).

 

[akmom]

It is definitely definitely, haha.

I first encountered the eyesore "gaol" while reading <I>A Tale of Two Cities</I>. I actually figured it out in the context of the sentence, after uttering "gay-ole" a few times, but I had to look it up to be sure. (And this was in the days before home Internet, when you actually had to find a dictionary and hum the alphabet to yourself while finding a word, so it had to be interesting to be worth it.) When G sounds like a J, it is followed by an E or an I. I can't really think of any examples in modern English where G makes the J-sound and isn't followed by one of those letters. So "gaol" isn't a very logical spelling for jail!

 

[cybele]

I think the point is that it isn't modern English.
For the record I think jail is an eyesore, but I am more used to seeing gaol.

 

[brainzig]

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