How "smart" are kids these days?

Kids LOVE science. Younger kids, especially, and they're very adept at picking up technical jargon.

Kids are smart.. And they've at least heard of those sciencey terms in class by now, but I dunno.. science and blood drinking.. I say beef it up more to make it YA and keep it YA.

But then again, that's just my blind opinion since I haven't read the book.

I've definitely seen MG books that have some discussion of physics in them (When You Reach Me has a bit. There was one a few years ago about gravity, where the kids treated physics lessons like magic spells - can't exactly remember the name, maybe Gravity Keeper?.). So, as long as it's written to their level, with an age appropriate POV, it could work.

You can always find info online about the levels of when certain concepts are taught in scool. They'd need to at least have the basics that the theories in your book use (ie, maybe not the specific science, but the levels of understanding that preceede it so that they can understand the scientific explanations you use.)

Maybe find a teacher or librarian of your target readership to read it.

~suki

Science is part of a lot of kids books and it's fine and fun as long as you neither assume that the reader knows it nor get too teachy when you try to explain it...

Kids are learning a lot me than we did when we were kids. When a child we did not have a computer, no internet, mobile phones were coolboxes, an i-pod was a boombox on your shoulder. Cars were not computerized. Now things are so more complicated, kids get wise sooner.

Some kids are very smart. Some kids are smart and some are not. It is not whether a kid is smart or not that matters, but who your target audience is. If you are aiming at kids then those who the book appeals to - smart or other wise - will pick it up and read it. Some may finish it - others may not. The level of science may not matter as some kids will read the book regardless.

One way of seeing what sort of 'stuff' is in kids books is to go and look in either the kids book section of a library or good bookshop.

Some authors who tend to write "smart" kids books:

Blue Balliet (art theory, art history, math)
Roland Smith (zoology, science)
Madeleine L'engle (these books are older but quite intellectual, and still very popular)--weird science

You can get a good idea of stuff kids are meant to grasp pretty easily. In general, kids are pretty smart, so if you can hold their interest you can do a lot. And I have heard many times that you don't really understand a concept unless you can explain it in terms a little kid can understand.

Well, I teach first grade, and these days we start algebra in kindergarten. I am NOT kidding.

Once a week, I tutor older kids in our after school program. So yesterday I got a peek at the "earthquakes" chapter in the current 6th grade science book.

Quick, define the following terms: S-P Waves. Moho. Shadow Zone. Gap theory. Elastic deformation. Plastic deformation.

Now, I took geology in college. And I did not have to learn ANY of those terms. But these days, that's expected of 11-year-old kids.

The bar is very, very high these days. At the state/federal level of educational bureaucracy, the belief is that if we just keep demanding more and more of our students, at some point we'll catch up to Japan and Singapore and Germany and all those other countries who keep scoring higher than us on achievement tests.

It probably won't work that way, and one of the side effects is that our society is becoming increasingly stratified. Go into a public school classroom, and you can draw a line down the middle. The kids who can handle the curriculum, the kids who read well enough to keep up with the expectations, know a hell of a lot more than any of us did when we were their age. And the kids who can't keep up, the kids who don't read very well...they are getting left in the dust. The gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" is a Grand Canyon-size gap.

So...long tirade...leading to the answer to your question.

If you are targeting reluctant readers, I wouldn't expect them to handle a whole lot of scientific theory. But the kids who love to read, the kids in the 1,000,000-word club (kids who read a million or more words a year), those kids who know how to Google and Wikipedia, they know more than most of the adults do. If the story is engaging and appropriate to the age range, then I wouldn't worry at all about the heavy dose of science.

But make sure your science is accurate! Because those are the kids who also nitpick. My son hates it when authors make mistakes. And he ALWAYS has to tell me all about them.

(but then, he is an uber-geek...)

JudScotKev said:

The bar is very, very high these days. At the state/federal level of educational bureaucracy, the belief is that if we just keep demanding more and more of our students, at some point we'll catch up to Japan and Singapore and Germany and all those other countries who keep scoring higher than us on achievement tests.

Click to expand...

I beg to differ. In practical usage, the standards are being lowered, as each state (well, all but a few) has lowered their standards of learning so that their scores improve enough for the federal mandate. My wife teaches high school earth science, and none of those terms are on the state standard test - the curriculum emphasizes breadth over depth.

Maybe California is one of those that isn't lowering the bar. I can only speak to what is on the curriculum I see in use at my elementary school. And while none of those particular terms may be on the state standard test, they most certainly are in the text book.

Today I noticed my daughter do something I have never seen a kid in my time been able to do nor most adults. There is some flash game online, where some cheerleader do some dance moves in quick succession and the one who plays need to pick the right order of moves.

Thing is all the moves are almost the same but for a few tiny variations. My little girl picked them out withing a 10 second frame and they were correct. As the game progressed she had to distinguish more moves and every time she chose correctly. I did not even know humans were able to do that. I really think we as the human race are developing very quickly into who knows what. I think my generation, the one after mine and those before are from the old world and the kids from now are forming a brand new world.

I know we (both teachers and writers) are supposed to see electronic media as The Enemy, or at least at a Threat, but I just don't. My older son learned how to read in kindergarten because the characters on his Pokemon Gameboy game talked to each other and he got sick of asking me to read it to him. My younger son watches WAY too much TV, and a lot of it pretty mature stuff, like Family Guy and South Park. He has also read almost 2 million words so far this school year--he finishes at least one novel a week. So TV and video games don't seem to have done my kids any damage!

One of the things about this generation: They can find out about anything they're interested in, and they know it. One of my students watches Dogs 101 on Animal Planet. Every week he tells me something new I don't know about dog breeds.

Obviously not all kids are information junkies. But kids with a mania for dinosaurs or polar bears or NASCAR can get so many facts so easily. So yeah, I think in that way, kids today have the ability to be smarter than we ever could have been.

I find it difficult to answer this question without more info about the book's genre.

I think kids can pick things up, but it definitely varies.

Like, my seven-year old brother has sort of a thick skull, haha, whereas my eight-year old brother is sort of a genius, and I'm sure he could understand adult fiction if he could actually read it. Well he can read it, just not very quickly.

It really depends on the kid.
My seven year old cousin wants to be a neurosurgeon and knows tons about science. I find it scary. He goes to private school.

Kids are pretty brilliant.

I would say that it doesn't matter much how much science and jargon you include in a ms, as long as it is accessible and interesting to a kid reading it. Kids are smart, and if they love a character or a story, then the science will just give them something to get more excited about. However, if the science talk dominates the ms, ie. overpowers the characters and the story, then agents/publishing houses will point this out.

Hope this helps! Good luck with querying!

having raised 2 boys who were too smart for their own good. I devised ways to challenge them. Kids thrive on challenges so make the stories a bit more difficult and you should have a hit.
Teens and children now have so much given to them they never have to stretch their minds. Just ask mom and dad and they get the answer or what ever it is they want.
If they have to work for something it stays in their heads longer. Give it to them and it is gone in a minute.
I taught Mentally challenged children and in the group I worked with at the institution did much better than the other teachers groups..
I had them do something they were not expected to be able to do and they succeeded beyond the workers expectations.
Kids love science, dinosaurs, math and bugs so let them have it.