Teens drop classics for debut book by beauty blogger, 25
TEENAGE girls are shunning classic books for a romance novel by a 25-year-old beauty blogger, research shows.
Girl Online, the debut book by ‘Zoella’, is the most popular title among UK adolescents, despite being written with a ghost-writer and receiving mixed reviews.
Zoella, whose real name is Zoe Sugg, is known for posting online videos of herself sampling make-up and other lifestyle products.
Young girls have flocked to the Brighton-based blogger’s YouTube channel, which has attracted more than ten million subscribers.
Her novel tells the story of a 15year- old girl whose blog about friendship, boys, family and anxiety goes viral after she finds love in New York. The book came top for secondary school pupils in a survey of 725,000 children at 3,300 schools.
The annual study by Keith Topping, education research professor at Dundee University, found the novel was the seventh most popular among primary school children.
It suggests reading habits have changed dramatically since a time when young girls would settle down with an E Nesbit or C S Lewis title.
Yesterday, critics voiced concerns over the findings, warning that the dominance of unchallenging books could harm literacy levels among teenagers.
In second place was science fiction novel The Maze Runner by James Dashner and in third place was fantasy tale The House of Hades by Rick Riordan.
Helen Fraser of the Girls’ Day School Trust, former boss at Penguin Books UK, said Miss Sugg’s novel was popular because ‘her life experiences are similar to those of her fans, who look to her for advice and reassurance’.
But Girl Online, which sold a record-breaking 78,109 copies in its first week of publication in 2014, sparked controversy after publisher Penguin admitted Miss Sugg was ‘helped’ to write it by children’s author Siobhan Curham.
It received mixed verdicts in the national press and parent reviewers warned that it is not heavy on informative content. One wrote on the Amazon website: ‘If you are looking for an educational book, this isn’t it.’
Another said the novel ‘makes me weep for humanity’s future’.
A young reader added: ‘I’m 13 and I liked Zoe before this but the book is terrible … very badly written.’
The study found boys prefer nonfiction, and that at primary level they tend to focus on one author, whereas girls prefer more variety.
The report also noted that at primary school pupils tend to read books above the difficulty level for their age group, but ‘the difficulty of books plateaus or declines’ at secondary school.
Chris McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education, said the books most children are required to read by their school are ‘not sufficiently challenging’, adding: ‘Unless we rid ourselves of this classroom culture of low aspirations and low expectations we will never be able to match the educational level of our economic competitors.’
‘This will have long-term consequences for the prosperity and well-being of our country.’