President of BookTrust and former Children’s Laureate, Michael Morpurgu, has written an open letter with every Children’s Laureate dating back 25 years, calling on the Government to commit to a long-term investment in books and reading for under-sevens. The Society of Authors joins the signatories’ calls for a national strategy to get children reading. This must include investment in schools and a drive to ensure more schools are provisioned with high quality school libraries.
The letter, which is addressed to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the leader of the opposition Sir Keir Starmer, counts Malorie Blackman, Julia Donaldson and current Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho among its signatories. It forms part of BookTrust’s new Get Reading campaign.
In the letter, Morpurgo stresses that in a ‘cost-of-living crisis [that] is tipping more families into poverty […] children who are read to regularly are more likely to overcome disadvantage’. Roughly 4.2 million children are currently living in deprivation. A recent survey by BookTrust of over 2,000 low-income families shows that, while 95% of parents with children under seven believe reading is crucial, less than half of children are read to at bedtime, and only half of children between the ages of one and two are read to daily.
Reading for pleasure is vital to almost every aspect of children’s education; not only does it improve literacy and communication skills, but it teaches curiosity, is key to the pursuit of knowledge, and introduces children to different subjects.
This letter comes at a crucial time, when the effects of the cost-of-living crisis are being keenly felt by families and parents are looking to a brighter future for their children. Instilling a love of reading for pleasure is one of the simplest steps parents and schools can take to give children the best chance in life – but this ethos must come from government policy, both in setting a positive example and by providing the conditions for schools to flourish.
Chair of the SoA’s Children’s Writers and Illustrators Group (CWIG), Abie Longstaff
Read the open letter here.
We encourage authors to celebrate exceptional schools that are fostering a love of reading in pupils with a Reading for Pleasure Award. You can also write to your local MP, asking that they make reading for pleasure and funding for school libraries a political priority.
In March 2023, following the publication of Equal futures? An imbalance of opportunities – the Great School Libraries report into school library provision – we wrote to Sir Keir Starmer, the local MP for Holborn where the SoA’s head office is based, asking that Labour prioritise school libraries ahead of the 2024 general election.
I think this campaign is aiming for something very important but what I never understand about people’s mentality in the UK today is why people think the government is so important that it should take any real role in this issue. The way to get children reading books is to make them think reading is the most pleasurable experience one can have in life. People who love reading need to be sitting in public places, dressed nicely, reading books with attractive covers and laughing a lot. Children will notice this and want to emulate those types of adults.Philip Pullman makes… Read more »