I honestly don’t have an opinion here. I don’t have kids and I didn’t read kids books when I was a kid. So even if I had an opinion, it wouldn’t count for much.

But I was over at goodreads a few minutes ago checking out reviews for a kids book I’d heard about, in this case it’s middle grade.

I understand the concept that parents want to know what their kids are reading. I don’t have a problem with that at all. If I had kids, I’d want to know what they were reading, too. But what I don’t understand is when adults leave ratings and reviews for kids books.

Not everyone did this. A few of the reviews were nicely written by adults, but based on the reactions that kids had after reading the book. A few parents reviewed the way their kids reacted to the book. And I would imagine that if I’d written a kids book, the reactions from kids would be the most important thing to me as an author.

A few of the reviews and ratings I saw weren’t from a kid’s POV. They were written by pedantic adults, and filled with criticism and insults. Maybe this is something that’s acceptable with kids books. I honestly don’t know. I just thought it was interesting.