Anything kidslit can learn from the first TikTok Book Awards?
or Why Is There No Prize for 'Getting Kids out of a Reading Slump'?
I was recently lucky enough to be invited to the first ever TikTok Book Awards. These brand new awards are all about the joy of reading, voted by readers.
Being there at the event, it wasn’t only the DJ set and the cocktails that made it feel fresh. For a start ‘Best Book to End a Reading Slump’ was my favourite category.
Everything about these awards emphasised the important they placed on readers.
Isn’t ‘Best Book to End a Reading Slump’ just the sort of category that only an enthusiastic reader could come up with? Because Yes, I’ve felt it, sometimes reading can feel like hard work, even if you love reading. Sometimes you can go for months without reading a book that properly engages you.
What about people who aren’t such keen readers? How easy it is to lose them.
Basically reading can be hard work
Reading can be hard work even for people who like reading.
I think that is why a prize for ‘Best Book to End a Reading Slump’ feels so important. Made me wonder why we’ve never had one before.
When I used to run my bookshop I might get someone in who had got out of reading for years and was trying to find a way back in. I always had a few books I’d love to recommend for exactly that state. It feels great to have a prize for exactly those brilliant books.
I’ve also tried to understand why learning to read is so hard
Reading is pretty unnatural! Unlike listening (which you kind of do without even trying), reading is about decoding a set of totally invented symbols and like many things which are challenging, the only way to get better is to practise.
(And don’t people want to practice more at something they enjoy?)
Reading in English is especially tough because there are over 40 individual sounds in spoken English, but we have only 26 letters, so we use combinations of letters to represent some sounds. Things get even trickier because the sounds of individual letters and letter combinations are not used consistently.
Yes reading is hard work on the brain until you become practised at it. Or more difficult again if you get out of practise.
Once you can read, it does become a lot more like listening where you see words, like on signs, you cannot help but read them.
Some books make us readers
I started out wanting to write books for children because I feel reading is so important. And because when I get interested in something that feels important, I like to go into it. So I know there is a lot of research about the positive impact of reading.
I’m basically a huge supporter of anything that makes more people readers and often this does start in childhood.
We do want more readers, right, especially when a lot of data seems to be suggesting reading is becoming a minority pastime, particularly for children?
Do we celebrate books that make children want to read?
I love this Guardian article about Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka, the latest winner of the Booker Prize, on how gamebooks and Choose Your Own Adventure got him hooked on reading. A reading journey should be able to start anywhere.
I think the quality of children’s books is so important. And when I say quality, I mean having something for everyone and the sorts of books children adore. Another thing I learned running my bookshop, is how many adults approach reading for children as being something that should be an improving experience, like eating your greens.
So why, I found myself asking - why do we not have an award for writing books for children that help them to learn to love reading?
Here’s my award suggestion of what we should be celebrating about children’s books:
Best Book to get Reluctant Readers Turning the Pages
The Book I Most Recommend to my Friends
The Book I Re-read the Most
The Book that Made me a Reader
Other great categories from the TikTok Book Awards
The BookTok Awards felt so imaginative. Also refreshing was that I loved the way they resisted categorising or confining books to genre. Books were pitted against others with nothing to recommend themselves other than people were enjoying reading them and sharing them.
They included a broad range from crime fiction to young adult fiction to classics.
‘Best Book to End a Reading Slump’ candidates included crime, romance, dark comedy and books published by children’s publishers.
‘Best BookTok Revival’ included a backlist that lined up Jane Austen with Samantha Shannon.
And: Best Book I Wish I Could Read Again For The First Time covered historical fiction, literary fiction and a graphic novel.
Surely this is all something to cheer about? Especially when you see how many people #BookTok is reaching and making reading feel fun, relevant and important.
Boosting reading – and selling books
Even for anyone who is not on TikTok (and that does include me), it’s been difficult to miss just how popular #BookTok has become. Here, through video, readers share their favourite books, they read together, they often do joint posts where enthusiastic readers discuss books.
And bookshops have reported it has meant they have become gathering places for people who are enjoying this shared experience in real life - surely something bookshops should absolutely be about.
It is certainly more than just an on-line phenomenon. There has definitely been a little bewilderment expressed in book trade circles about it all.
The kinds of books readers are discovering and loving through the platform are not necessarily the newly-published titles from publishers with current big marketing budgets behind them.
In the past year, the #BookTok hashtag has grown more than 160% to over 138 billion views. And the books they have been recommending have started to affect the bestseller lists.
Authors have shot to the top of bestseller charts that have had a lot of people in publishing scratching their heads – because these have included self-published books or books published years ago, like romance, thriller and YA author Colleen Hoover, who first self-published, suddenly became hot literary property.
Yes #BookTok is really mixing things up and I like to think, challenging the publishing status quo, which, lets be honest - only ever changes at a glacial pace.
‘Book of the Year’ Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola
‘Book of the Year’ was won by bestselling Southwark-born Bolu Babalola, for her campus-set romance that plays with familiar literary romance tropes to explore questions about gender, sexuality and modern dating. Yes - a romance is Book of the Year.
Babalola has worked in various writing and cultural roles, including time at the BBC. Her bio reads: ‘A British-Nigerian woman with a misleading bachelor's degree in law and a masters degree in American Politics & History from UCL. She feels it is important to state that her thesis was on Beyoncé's "Lemonade" and she was awarded a distinction for it. So essentially she has a masters degree in Beyoncé.’
How cool is that?
She is also a World Literacy Foundation Global Ambassador. Bolu Babalola was named in Forbes 30 Under 30 List for 2021 for her work in Literature and Media. Her debut Love in Colour, published in 2020, was a Sunday Times bestseller and on Waterstones book of the year shortlist.
And she chooses to say everything she wants to say through writing romance.
Younger and more diverse book awards
At the book awards not many of the people there were the sort you might bump into at a usual publishing bash. Having been to many book trade events it can feel rather predominantly of very similar people - and this is likely to affect the sorts of books that get published, promoted or sold.
At these book awards I might have felt out of place being rather staid and middle aged, but I knew I was among fellow readers and people who have connected over books, so as far as I’m concerned #BookTok people are my people.
Plus I got to meet and shake the hand of Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.
My final thought is: I would simply love to bring this kind of vibe into children’s books.
Anyone else asking themselves: Why Is There No Prize for 'Getting Kids out of a Reading Slump'?
Winners of the first TikTok Book Awards
Book of the year - Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola
Author of the year - Holly Jackson
Creator of the year - Eden Victoria
Indie bookshop of the year - Portobello Bookshop, Edinburgh
Best BookTok revival - Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Best book to end a reading slump - Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
Best book I wish I could read again for the first time - Heartstopper: Volume One by Alice Oseman