‘Children have a billion things they would rather be looking at than a book’

Thanks to streaming services, children never have to wait until their favourite television programme comes on. Instead, there are millions of hours of entertainment, just a click away. As I found out when my son discovered The Simpsons on Disney+ and began making his way through all 767 episodes.

I have nothing against TV or films. I love them. But being glued to screens is passive. There is no need to use your imagination.

Children live between the real world and the imaginary one. When they play at being a robot or an astronaut or a dinosaur, they believe (or at least half-believe) they are a robot or an astronaut or a dinosaur. They are immersed. 

And just like playing, books are immersive too. But books couldn’t be more different from screens.

So, how do we encourage children to read for pleasure? As a father to an 11-year-old boy, I know this is no easy task. First, you need to read to your child from an early age, even as a baby. 

So many picture books have become classics: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are, Lost and Found, The Gruffalo, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Julian Is a Mermaid. I miss them now my son Alfred is older. Just find a time, if you can the same time each day, for you to share a book. You need a routine, otherwise, it just won’t happen. You’ve just got home from work. You’re tired. You’re stressed. But for those 15, ten or even just five minutes, your troubles will be gone.

Alf and I graduated from me reading every page to him, to us reading pages to each other, before eventually he read alone. Sometimes Alf and I like to read our own books as we cuddle up together. He might express interest in what I am reading, which can lead to some thought-provoking conversations too. “Daddy, who is Kim Jong-Un? And why do you look like him?”

A regular trip to your local library or bookshop can be a treat for a child. They get to choose! I never disapprove of Alf’s book choices. A fact book about killer sharks. Great. A child-friendly biography of a footballer. Brilliant. A Batman graphic novel. Fantastic.

Why be snobby? Children’s books that are there purely to entertain like Wimpy Kid or Horrid Henry or The 13-Story Treehouse or Dog Man or Bunny vs Monkey or Mr Gum or Tom Gates are often undervalued. These books are not just brilliant entertainment, they are gateways for children to explore more complex works. I have met eight-year-olds who have read all the Harry Potters ten times over, and 12-year-olds who have never read a book in their lives. 

And there’s time for children to develop their tastes. To move on to authors who don’t just write books, they write “literature”: Michael Morpurgo, Malorie Blackman, David Almond, Jacqueline Wilson, Katherine Rundell, Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Ness, Mark Haddon, Benjamin Zephaniah.

We must remember that children develop at different rates. And we all know that boys are much more reluctant readers than girls. That’s because girls are smarter than boys. 

When I visit schools to share my love of reading, I always ask the kids in the room, “Who hates reading? Who thinks books are boring?” A few morose boys sitting at the back always put their hands up. They are the ones I want to reach. They are the ones we all must try and reach, otherwise they will be left behind. Childhood is short. You don’t have long to turn a child into a reader. I was visiting a school in a deprived part of Glasgow and I asked one of those morose boys, “Why don’t you like books?” And he replied: “Books are boring! Not enough killings!”

A child who never reads just hasn’t found the right book yet. I came away from that school event determined to write a book for that boy. I wrote The World’s Worst Children. A collection of short stories. Lots of pictures. Surreal humour. Halfway between The Beano and a novel. I sent boxes of the book to the school, and I received a lovely letter back from the headteacher. There were now some boys in the school who were reading on their own for the first time in their lives.