In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

BookBrowse Reviews Consuming Kids by Susan Linn

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Consuming Kids by Susan Linn

Consuming Kids

The Hostile Takeover of Childhood

by Susan Linn
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2004, 256 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2005, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


This illuminating read has a place on all library shelves - Parenting/Current Affairs

From the book jacket: A shocking exposé of the $15 billion marketing maelstrom aimed at our children and how we can stop it.

Comment: Consuming Kids is a very scary read - which makes it all the more important that it is read.  Much of what Linn says has already been discussed in other recent books about consumerism such as Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic by John De Graaf, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies by Naomi Klein and Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers by Alissa Quart. However Linn takes a slightly different angle by looking at the 'whole child' - taking the position that children are 'multifaceted beings whose physical, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual development are all threatened when their value as consumers trumps their value as people'.  

Obviously children have been the target of advertising for a long time but as Linn writes 'comparing the advertising of two or three decades ago to the commercialism that permeates our children's world today is like comparing a BB gun to a smart bomb.  Linn doesn't just serve up the problem, she offers solutions.  In addition to lots of advice for parents and other groups involved with children she insists that there needs to be much tighter laws controlling advertising to children, because self-regulation obviously isn't working.  

'Linn makes a compelling case....concentrating on how the sheer volume of marketing aimed at controlling youthful imagination is what should most concern us. Play, she notes, comes naturally to children, who, by imaginatively engaging the world within safe boundaries, develop rich inner lives, creativity, critical thinking and autonomy in adulthood. But anything that facilitates free play is precisely what "the loud voice of commerce" cannot endure.' - The Washington Post.

This review first ran in the August 3, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Consuming Kids, try these:

  • American Wasteland jacket

    American Wasteland

    by Jonathan Bloom

    Published 2011

    About This book

    As more people are going hungry while simultaneously more people are morbidly obese, American Wasteland sheds light on the history, culture, and mindset of waste while exploring the parallel eco-friendly and sustainable-food movements.

  • Fat Land jacket

    Fat Land

    by Greg Critser

    Published 2004

    About This book

    More by this author

    Critser's portrait of Fat America including forays into the diabetes ward of a major children's hospital make Fat Land a chilling but eloquent portrait of the cost in human lives - many of them very young lives - of America's obesity epidemic.

We have 4 read-alikes for Consuming Kids, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The House of Doors
    by Tan Twan Eng
    Every July, I take on the overly ambitious goal of reading all of the novels chosen as longlist ...
  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.