Analytics firm Circana reported yesterday in its first Future of Book Study that publishing titles for middle-graders are underperforming in the US book market.

The company tracked sales of physical books for kids ages nine to 12 at retailers across the US during the first six months of 2024—and they are down by 5% (1.8 million units) compared to last year’s results for the same period. Circana’s book industry analyst Brenna Connor pinpoints more screentime as a factor contributing to this decline, in that it’s leaving kids with less time to read books for fun. 

Interestingly, despite the overall sales dip for books targeting nine- to 12-year-olds, titles featuring robots, dragons and wilderness-themed adventures posted growth. 

Circana notes that children’s book sales have been softening since 2022. And sales of books for all other age ranges of the youth demographic are also down by 2% for the first half of this year.

“As an industry, we need to find creative, actionable ways to improve reading frequency, and educating parents is one place to start,” says Connor. “By understanding the connection between their child’s well-being and how often they read for fun, we can help to encourage this valuable—and hopefully lifelong—behavior.”

Dog Man: The Scarlet Shredder, published by Scholastic Books and authored by Dav Pilkey, ranked as the best-performing kids title in the first half of 2024, selling more than 914,000 units at US retailers. Rounding out the top five are Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (490,000 units), Wendy Loggia’s Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography (380,000 units), Bill Martin’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (281,000 units) and Carle Eric’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar (276,000 units).