Hi HN, Bookvine.io helps find age appropriate books for kids, with links to get it from Amazon or your local county library (limited to US for now). This was created by my 13yr old son who is an avid reader. I used to spend hours trying to get the right books for him to read and then get it from local county library or Amazon. He wanted to create this site from the books that he has read - to help others in a similar situation.
He used Webflow to create the site (I am a software engineer and guided him thru the process and some custom JS coding that was required) More about the story in the About Page. We would love some feedback or suggestions, to help improve the website. (there are no ads/no sign up/no monetary benefit etc) There are almost 300 books, along with reviews and recommendations - categorised by age - to make it easier for parents and kids to pick the next book to read easily.
He's doing a fantastic job! I haven't started going through the list yet, but the categories providing a competence description are a godsend for parents of kids who are ahead or behind of their age bracket. Well done to him!
This is fantastic. Thanks so much to your son for curating this list and creating the site. We will start working our way through these recommendations.
Totally agree with you on all the points. As with most recommendations - YMMV.
This is just to provide a guideline/reference. The way I recommend seeing this list is - say your kid likes "The Penderwicks" then..."hey are few other books that are similar to The Penderwicks"
I don't think this is a big deal, as IME kids don't find age inappropriate titles interesting enough to read. My wife is an elementary librarian and kids in grade 4 or less just don't like YA aimed at the 12+ crowd.
I always found it interesting how different books for teenagers were from movies considered appropriate for the same age group.
For example, the "Cherub" series by Robert Muchamore, which I greatly enjoyed as a kid, included crime, drug and alcohol use (even by kids), sex scenes, mentions of underage prostitution and human trafficking, and even a scene of an attempted rape on a minor. The much more popular "Hunger Games" series was a little bit less violent, but not by much. Nobody seemed to mind. Those books were clearly intended for teenagers, I'd say 12-16 year olds, and there were no disclaimers about what those books contained.
Even with TV, things aren't as obvious as they seem. Over here in Poland, very few parents care about age restrictions. Unlike English, we don't even have a word for "explicit content". Creating online accounts with fake dates of birth is pretty much normal. When I was in middle school, most people I knew watched porn with very few difficulties. Game stores don't have any obligations to restrict what kids can buy, it's not even clear if refusing a game sale based solely on the age of the buyer is legal[1]. When one game store refused to sell GTA5 to a kid, I heard about it on the news. When I compare people of my generation raised in Poland to our American peers, where explicit content is much more of a taboo, I see no noticeable effects of watching such content.
This has some disturbing censorship implications, how many real-life phenomena are filmmakers omitting to get just a little bit more viewers, just because of some well-intended laws that seem to have no actual positive effect on society?
I would like to see the teens break out of the sameness of all the books in the young adult market and read more "adult" books. By adult, I mean some of the less cookie cutter book history has to offer. Yes, I realize there are formulaic books for adults as well, but the young adult market takes it to another level.
I could also live with no more stories about saving society or the world and how it happens to have fallen about a teenager where they aren't sure what looks best to wear and can't decide between several people as a romantic partner among those who are helping them along their quest.
Well done, this is great. I’ve already sent my wife a link to it. We are mostly through the original magic treehouse series and we need a new book series to read to our 4 year old. Amazon search is a wasteland for this sort of thing.
Let’s talk SEO. You need pages like this:
books-for-6-year-olds
books-for-7-year-olds
Etc
We have a site crontab.guru and you would not believe the traffic we get on our “every n minutes” pages. Long tail!
One more.. in your book pages I would change /series/ to /review/
Thanks a lot for the feedback and suggestions. Hope you find the site it useful. Totally agree with you, SEO is definitely an area to focus on so we can get organic search traffic.
btw - good fun series to pick up post Magic treehouse would be - Press Start, geronimo stilton/Thea stilton and Dogman to name a few.
Haha I love crontab.guru! It fits perfectly for me who uses cron schedules only 1-2 times a year, just infrequently enough to forget the format before needing it again.
These books have great pencil drawings and text paragraph under each picture. They are not like Japanese cartoons which have almost no text. Their drawings are also not cartoonish.
Come to the US, I couldn’t find anything similar. There’s no new publication of these kind of books in China either.
Suggestion: I'm looking at the 10-14 list. When I click "Next Page", it retains the "book series" section on top and the actual next page I have to scroll halfway down the screen to see. I'm not expecting to have to skip over the book series section again to get to the next page of individual books. Difficult and confusing, at best.
Love it. School and county/city libraries are great under utilized resources. That is one of the reason we put the library links directly as well. During COVID my son used a ton of the ebook lending from our local County library.
Overall, this appears to be a learning project for a middle schooler and his dad as well as a way for them to cover costs through affiliate links. While this might be a fun and useful way to discover new books, you should read the reviews and cross-reference your findings with parental or specialty groups like teachclean.com if you are concerned about the subject matter.
Out of curiosity, why did you put quotes around the word "marriage"?
Am I correctly interpreting your comment as implying that same-sex marriage is not legitimate, and that children should not be aware of its existence (or at least, that its inclusion makes a book inappropriate for children)?
realcul|3 years ago
Handytinge|3 years ago
jasonboyd|3 years ago
the_common_man|3 years ago
rahimnathwani|3 years ago
- language difficulty (which is what lexile aims to measure)
- how appropriate the topic is
My 5.5yo son is decoding words at about 4th grade level (based on an informal 'San Diego Quick Assessment'). But he's limited in his reading by:
- his life experience and existing knowledge, which both affect comprehension
- his willingness to read books that have few pictures (he doesn't like books that have 10 pages between pictures)
It's hard to find books that are age-appropriate (based on topic and maybe format) but also have challenging language (vocabulary, grammar).
cpfohl|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
barathr|3 years ago
The Humphrey the hamster series
The Zoey and Sassafras series
The Secret Explorers series
Alice in Wonderland
Some Beverly Cleary books
Many of the DK nonfiction books
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
realcul|3 years ago
This is just to provide a guideline/reference. The way I recommend seeing this list is - say your kid likes "The Penderwicks" then..."hey are few other books that are similar to The Penderwicks"
skeeter2020|3 years ago
I don't think this is a big deal, as IME kids don't find age inappropriate titles interesting enough to read. My wife is an elementary librarian and kids in grade 4 or less just don't like YA aimed at the 12+ crowd.
miki123211|3 years ago
For example, the "Cherub" series by Robert Muchamore, which I greatly enjoyed as a kid, included crime, drug and alcohol use (even by kids), sex scenes, mentions of underage prostitution and human trafficking, and even a scene of an attempted rape on a minor. The much more popular "Hunger Games" series was a little bit less violent, but not by much. Nobody seemed to mind. Those books were clearly intended for teenagers, I'd say 12-16 year olds, and there were no disclaimers about what those books contained.
Even with TV, things aren't as obvious as they seem. Over here in Poland, very few parents care about age restrictions. Unlike English, we don't even have a word for "explicit content". Creating online accounts with fake dates of birth is pretty much normal. When I was in middle school, most people I knew watched porn with very few difficulties. Game stores don't have any obligations to restrict what kids can buy, it's not even clear if refusing a game sale based solely on the age of the buyer is legal[1]. When one game store refused to sell GTA5 to a kid, I heard about it on the news. When I compare people of my generation raised in Poland to our American peers, where explicit content is much more of a taboo, I see no noticeable effects of watching such content.
This has some disturbing censorship implications, how many real-life phenomena are filmmakers omitting to get just a little bit more viewers, just because of some well-intended laws that seem to have no actual positive effect on society?
[1] Polish https://bezprawnik.pl/sprzedaz-dziecku-gry-dla-doroslych/
LanceH|3 years ago
I could also live with no more stories about saving society or the world and how it happens to have fallen about a teenager where they aren't sure what looks best to wear and can't decide between several people as a romantic partner among those who are helping them along their quest.
encoderer|3 years ago
Let’s talk SEO. You need pages like this:
books-for-6-year-olds
books-for-7-year-olds
Etc
We have a site crontab.guru and you would not believe the traffic we get on our “every n minutes” pages. Long tail!
One more.. in your book pages I would change /series/ to /review/
realcul|3 years ago
btw - good fun series to pick up post Magic treehouse would be - Press Start, geronimo stilton/Thea stilton and Dogman to name a few.
monkeybutton|3 years ago
pbamotra|3 years ago
depsypher|3 years ago
Also, my kid is really enjoying the Dragon Masters series right now, seems good for the younger readers just getting interested in chapter books.
kstealth25|3 years ago
jll29|3 years ago
Suitability of books is a complex topic, but the site is a good start.
Typo: Animal Farm is by George Orwell (= Eric Blair), not by Jack London as the site says.
realcul|3 years ago
temp8964|3 years ago
These books have great pencil drawings and text paragraph under each picture. They are not like Japanese cartoons which have almost no text. Their drawings are also not cartoonish.
Come to the US, I couldn’t find anything similar. There’s no new publication of these kind of books in China either.
realcul|3 years ago
taftster|3 years ago
Suggestion: I'm looking at the 10-14 list. When I click "Next Page", it retains the "book series" section on top and the actual next page I have to scroll halfway down the screen to see. I'm not expecting to have to skip over the book series section again to get to the next page of individual books. Difficult and confusing, at best.
realcul|3 years ago
pppoe|3 years ago
hedora|3 years ago
Need to look at the other half. :-)
realcul|3 years ago
robmsmt|3 years ago
mistrial9|3 years ago
[deleted]
Minor49er|3 years ago
Overall, this appears to be a learning project for a middle schooler and his dad as well as a way for them to cover costs through affiliate links. While this might be a fun and useful way to discover new books, you should read the reviews and cross-reference your findings with parental or specialty groups like teachclean.com if you are concerned about the subject matter.
NoraCodes|3 years ago