Like most parents, I want to encourage my kids to read. I got my daughter Michelle a Kindle Paperwhite Kids just over a year ago. That's her above, together with Bruce the Goose and the Kindle.

I also bought the Kids+ subscription, which gives her quite a wide choice of books to read at no extra cost. However, a few weeks ago she told me that she’s read everything that she finds interesting and can’t find anything new to read. 

I had a quick look and the selection did seem more geared toward younger kids. Officially the Kids+ subscription caters to kids 3-12. Although she’s 10, she’s generally interested in stuff for older kids.

So I switched the Kindle out of kids mode and we started to browse the Kindle store for teen fiction. Her eye caught a novel based on a TV series she likes - Outer Banks. I downloaded a sample for her to try.

She read it over the next few days and was keen to get the full book. Now things got a little tricky. Since the Kindle was no longer in kids mode, she was effectively logged into her mom’s account. This gave her the ability to buy whatever she wanted without approval 😱

So I decided to let her create her own Amazon account instead. She quite liked this idea. We did it together. We then added her debit card to the account so that any purchases would come directly off it. She could then claim back any book purchases she made in Bomad.

The book she wanted cost £2.49. Since she already had enough on her card, we went ahead and bought it. The money was taken from her account:

I then refunded it to her in Bomad:

In future, she will request to load money onto her debit card, like she does for any other unsupervised spending (£10 in this example):

When this request pops up on my phone, I will transfer real money to her debit card from my bank account, and Bomad will deduct £10 from her virtual account. 

She can then go ahead and buy Book 2 in the series on her Kindle:

and request a Bomad refund for it:

I’m hopeful that with this new freedom to choose whatever she wants to read, she’ll start reading more. The Kindle is already recommending similar books to her, so that should help. I’m glad that I don’t have to help her choose books, and I'm pretty sure that young girls don't want their dads involved in that either!

I will, however, keep a casual eye on what she’s reading, just to make sure it’s age-appropriate.

The early signs are positive. She bought the first book 2 weeks ago and is currently halfway through it. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

If you’d like to buy your kids a Kindle, please use this referral link. That way Amazon will pay us a small referral fee at no cost to you.