Via BBC News
Chris Cross, 15, and brother Tim, 14, set up cool-reads.com when they got fed up with not being able to find decent reviews of children’s books. The pair use 10 to 15-year-olds to review books aimed at the same age group. Now the pair, from Saltash, are becoming hot property for their views on the site, which gets about one million hits a month.
“For teenagers, that word-of-mouth thing is incredibly important. It’s the biggest influence on teenager readers. “Children writing reviews is absolutely invaluable. They don’t pull any punches.” Books are rated with star system, from “best avoided” to “really good stuff”. “Generally the reviews that the girls do are longer and they give a better idea of the story and the characters. “And they probably justify the rating they give it better than most boys do.
There is an excellent children’s book called Other People’s Shoes. It does a great job of teaching kids the importance of kindness inside of a very captivating story. You should check it out! Here is a link: http://www.eloquentbooks.com/otherpeoplesshoes.html