What Do Kids Read?

My niece is a bookish 13-year-old, and I started wondering what it is they are reading at that age. I always read one book a year from a genre I wouldn’t normally touch, and this year’s pick is a novel that’s mega popular among the 13-year-old crowd. Let nobody say my reading range is narrow.

The novel I picked was published 10 years ago to no particular fanfare. But then recently it became very popular on TikTok with its title (If He Had Been With Me) turning into a hashtag with tens of millions (yes, no typo) of mentions. The author, Laura Nowlin, is now about to release a sequel. Everybody expects it to be a mega bestseller.

Now, this is not a work of immortal literature but a very age-specific book. It didn’t appeal all that much to 13-year-olds in 2013 but it’s really appealing to today’s early teens. This is significant because teens are all in the “now”. Why would they go nuts for a book where characters burn CDs and don’t know social media exist?

That’s what made me curious about the book.

One thing I’m noticing is that the novel is refreshingly non-woke. This is not surprising given that the woke revolution happened much later. I’m now very curious about the sequel. I wonder if the author decided to woke it up to stay current. This would be ludicrous because in the sequel the events take place a decade ago, as well. But we’ll see. The original novel, though, is completely apolitical, and that’s really good.

The grammar is atrocious but that kind of makes sense, given that the narrator is a teenager. The vocabulary is limited but again, teenager. The subject matter is how to find a boyfriend, how to choose a boyfriend, how to keep a boyfriend, how to find friends to discuss the boyfriend. I would have loved that stuff at 13.

The family dynamic that’s portrayed is very American. The fathers are sources of money but absolutely nothing else. They aren’t integrated into the family in any other way. The mothers are extremely infantile and either eccentric or mentally unstable. There’s nothing remotely resembling a strong, engaged, interested mother.

The kids all pair up in very serious relationships very early in life. There’s a lot of discussions about sex but the goal of the relationships even at this early age is to get married and have children together.

To sum it up, I like the book. I’m only halfway in but it’s very enjoyable if you remember that the target audience is girls in the early teens. The novel isn’t profound but nobody at that age is or should be. I wouldn’t mind my kid reading it at that age.