If you’ve looked for appropriate books, movies or other media for kiddos, you might have come across or used Common Sense Media (CSM). This is a website that proposes to “rate, educate, and advocate for kids, families, and schools”, according to their website. This is not necessarily a bad thing (after all, EVERYTHING gets reviewed at some point or another), but CSM is known for being conservative in their reviews, and rates books mostly based on how many times a “sensitive” issue comes up. These issues include violence, sex, language, consumerism, and drinking, drugs, smoking. Common Sense, to be fair, also rates books on their educational value, positive messages, and positive role models.
It sounds ok, right? Not amazing, or terrible, but ok. Honestly, if you have a young kid reading at a high level, it might be helpful to know if sex it going to come up in a book, and how it’s going to address it. The danger is using this source, and only this source, to judge whether a book is or isn’t right for your child. But according to the Office of Intellectual Freedom, a division of ALA, the company does more than just rate media for the good of the parents. It also plays a large role in affecting education legislation and technology surrounding it. The OIF’s main point is this:
No one group, however ambitious, well-funded and well-connected, should control children’s intellectual engagement online.
An alternative to Common Sense Media would be to use trusted review sources like School Library Journal (SLJ) or Novelist. School Library Journal might be a little difficult for parents to get their hands on, although I think even Amazon uses their reviews if available. Novelist is a great resource that promotes recommendation lists, generates read-alikes based on titles, authors or series, and contains reviews from multiple trusted sources (for example, a search for Sara Pennypacker’s new novel Pax shows reviews from Booklist, SLJ, Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus. Amazon pulls up SLJ only). There’s a lot that it can do, but I admit that it might not be as straightforward as Common Sense Media. It takes a little more time to dig into all that Novelist can offer, but once you do, there are a lot of great resources.
So here is my recommendation: go to your library’s website and see if you have access to Novelist (better yet, go into your library and ask a friendly librarian to show you where it is and how to use it!). Spend 5 minutes exploring; you can get started with this video here about read-alikes.
Decide for yourself which resources you like using, and don’t be afraid to consult more than one resource when looking for books for kids. Better yet, read what kids are reading – then you’ll be sure to know what’s going on.
