My woke take, as someone who has worked in both a public library and a school library, is that we desperately need both more books that are at a higher reading level but a less mature subject matter, and more books that are at a lower reading level but a more mature subject matter, because 8 year olds who are advanced readers are still 8 year olds and don't want to read about graphic violence and torture, and teens and adults who have learning difficulties or who are just later readers for whatever reason are still teens and adults and don't want to read about Billy the Bunny going to school or whatever the hell.
Shoutout to people in the notes also mentioning people learning the language, I should've mentioned that really, given that I've been stuck reading German picture books myself while learning German.
This is something that's been talked about in the industry for some time; I remember having discussions about it in the 90s. I've been out of the loop for awhile, but at least some publishers used to have imprints of what they called "Hi-Lo" (High interest, low difficulty) and reluctant reader books. Graphic novels were hailed as godsends for this type of reader: people with learning disabilities, people failed by their educational systems, English as Second Language readers, and so on. One would hope that market demand for these sorts of materials would have increased their output, but we all know how the "law" of supply and demand doesn't work.
Advanced readers have, ironically, been less discussed and less well-served, because as a class these kids are perfectly willing to read ahead and wade into books that are sophisticated enough for them linguistically, regardless of how much too sophisticated they are for them emotionally and intellectually. I went for classics, myself, especially Victorians. Publishers and writers in those days assumed whole-family readerships for certain types of works, and produced accordingly. But I've also meant a lot of adults who, having impressed too many adults in their youth by reading Proust or some such, regarded literature as some sort of competition rather than a pleasure or intellectual resource, and cut themselves off from the intellectual and emotional engagement with the works that would give them some more solid benefit than bragging rights. So yes, please, let's make those kids part of the discussion and take them seriously as a market need!
I tapped out as a gifted kid at about 13.
I didn’t enjoy the Victorian style and scifi and fantasy novels for adults were upsetting.
That’s how I ended up in Romance.
Sex was just sex but the stories were usually complicated enough for me to stay interested without being emotionally disturbing for my pleasure reading.
Because nothing “fun” was advanced and everything advanced was miserable.
Except Romance. That was at about 14.
I never left. Because that remains true.
