Part 5 – The Reading Crisis – Why children aren’t reading and what we can do about it.

Katy
0:11

Hi, I'm Katy

Ali
0:12

 

Katy
0:12

Katy
0:12

and I'm Ali, and this is Mostly Book Talk. Welcome to part five of our series about the reading crisis: why children aren't reading and what we can do about it.

Ali
0:20

In this part, we continue looking at what works to support Reading for Pleasure, focusing more this time on opportunities for authors to engage with readers and the importance of wider family and community involvement and spaces to discover and talk about book s.

Katy
0:34

We start with Illustrator Dappa Adiola, who highlights the importance of author visits in introducing children to new books and encouraging them to read, and also the importance of libraries giving access to free books.

Dapo Adeola
0:47

Author visits works. 100% it works. Like I myself did not understand that because again, only seven years in at the first author visit, just the impact. And lookup had been out for a week at the time. Just the impact. It was insane. We had parents coming up to us, parents who were my age, and they were like, Where were you guys when we were growing up? I was like, I was in school, just like he said. They were like, Oh my god, I wish this book wasn't around when I was growing up. I had somebody message me that this morning, you know. So it's just a huge impact, especially when it comes to books from diverse authors and illustrators. How many times do we get a Pakistani author visiting talking about their mythological book series? We don't get that. That's not a normal thing. It will go a long way towards firing that curiosity from children and engaging them and uh encouraging them to read for pleasure. If schools were funded appropriately so they could afford to pay us to come in properly, that would go a long way. Also, stop closing libraries, stop underfunding them. We're talking about access. Books don't have to be bought when they can be borrowed, you know, and they can be borrowed for free at no cost. Like, stop closing libraries. Community centers, youth clubs, all places where book clubs can exist as well, are also underfunded and closed. Stop doing that. Like, just stop doing that. If you stop doing that and stop taking money from that, you wouldn't have to create initiatives like the one that we're seeing. And that's not to bash the initiative. I'm here for it, it's a great thing. However, I don't understand how you can create your own problem and then come up with an initiative to solve a problem that didn't need to exist in the first place. It just is a lot of going around in circles.

Katy
2:34

Author Tom Palmer discusses the importance of book gifting schemes, such as book buzz and bookstart, and how valuable it is to get parents and grandparents involved in their children's reading and the role that libraries, literary festivals, and schools have creating shared opportunities to talk to different age groups.

Tom Palmer
2:50

I think giving a book to a child like so that they get a choice, they think year sevens get given a book, book buzz. I think stuff like that's really good. And then the thing to do with Shore Start and Reading, where like families got a book that was age appropriate to read with your child, and there was notes on how to do it. Like we got that when my daughter was born. A lot of people are not confident around books, a lot of adults and parents, and it gave you advice about how to read with your child, and those sorts of interventions were amazing. And I thought that was really effective as a dad, but also seeing that in the world when I was working in reader development around that period before it got published. If you invest that money into those, it will have a massive impact on everything in what books do for us, like nationally, economically, family, cohesion, happiness, all the things that get quoted about what books can do for you. Those things, they're like the foundation stones for all that sort of stuff. I think in schools, definitely when I started going into schools 20-ish years ago, reading for pleasure wasn't on the agenda and it is now part of the curriculum. And I think that's brilliant. The way schools read whole books now, children love it. They get really excited telling me about the books they're reading as a class read. Twenty years ago, it was it seemed to me schools were reading excerpts from books and they were analysing the text to death. There was no joy, there was no story, there was no cliffhanger for the next day. I think there's a lot of really good stuff as well. And government can do it through those sorts of schemes, and I think it's really important to recognise that. And they can support organisations like the Reading Agency, the Book Trust, Literacy Trust, etc. And there's so many people out there like us, like you and me talking now, and all the other people you've interviewed on this podcast. There's so many people who are willing to do it as part of their job, but also do it as part of their love of reading and wanting to encourage children to read. There's so many others out there that can keep this going if we get backed up with things like school librarians, etc. Another reading scheme, which was similar to Bookstart, was a really good one that I was involved with for years was Premier League reading stars. And it was amazing in that it was funded by an external body, the Premier League, and it's changed now, it's different now. But in its first five to ten years, it was about setting up reading groups in public libraries where a child and one of their adults would come to the reading group and they'd talk about reading and books together. And it was as much aimed at the adult of the child to sort of model how to get your child into reading. And it was quite in intensive. You'd have 10 child adult meetings six to ten times over a period, and then there'd be a football element to it. And it was it was doing that thing that if you are not confident about reading with your child, it was kind of modelling the things you could do. So it was teaching them in situ. And I sometimes I get invited into schools and they have an evening session, they're like an after school session, where I go in and do a talk to the children, but the adults are asked to come along as well. Um, and we talk about like reading problems and how to encourage a child to read and modelling good ideas. And I talk about my mum and now she got me reading football magazines and football newspapers, and so that those sorts of things, but they're so expensive, and also it's getting the adults in, isn't it? I've done some stuff with Cotton and Hay Junior School in Derbyshire, and like every now and then we'll get a couple of dozen parents or more in with to come in with the children, and we'll get a football-y sort of person in and we'll talk about reading together and how adults with children can help encourage their children to enjoy reading. And th there are schemes, but they're really expensive, so it's money, isn't it? It's money and the will to do it. There's enough people out there who want to do it, it's just giving us the money and the time to do it, isn't it? I did an event in a library in Cumbria, and we had about 10, 12 children and 12, 15 adults. And it was aimed at the children, the adults were just there to watch. But we as much aimed it as at the adults as we did the children. And so libraries, public libraries are a really good place to get children and adults in together to model. And they need an incentive, not just come to see some author, but like there's bigger incentives. And I think the other people who are in a position, when I get in an audience, when I get to see children with their parents, it's book festivals. So book festivals are the other place where you have a mixed audience of adults and children. If it's a public event, people who are already want to encourage their children to read and want them to see an author and be inspired by them. Book festivals are in a position to do that sort of work, like libraries are, and perhaps money could be channelled to them to do work where it's not about ticket sales, but it's about getting a hundred kids and a hundred parents or grandparents in together and being exposed to that whole passion for and excitement about reading together. Because that they're the two channels where I talk to adults and children together, and it's wonderful, it's different to doing a school event, and the parents really get into it, and you can see them seeing their children's excitement at meeting authors. Book festivals and public libraries are two good forums for that.

Katy
8:07

Author Louie Stowell talks about examples of where engagement has been really successful and the importance of space and community, starting with a comic, the phoenix.

Louie Stowell
8:15

Well, clearly the phoenix. That's a really interesting one because it's not just about kids loving the comic, it's also a community. And I think if you can create communities around reading, that's really important. I know Harper Collins did a study recently where they created community libraries in schools, or no, like places where the kids could go and read that had nice soft furnishings and the kids got to pick the books. So there's that sense of both creating spaces for reading and giving kids agency about what they read. And again, with the Phoenix, you've got so many different strips that you always have choice, and that that choice is really powerful, and kids being allowed to be part of the choice of books, I think, is really valuable. Whether it's in schools or whether it's parents just letting their kids pick what they want to read. And obviously, as libraries close, that becomes less and less possible. I do think access is a real problem and book deserts and just not having that selection available. And I don't know what the solution to that is because obviously that's an infrastructure problem, but it is definitely a problem.

Katy
9:14

Louie also highlights how communities of readers can develop online and the importance of adults modelling reading for children and young people.

Louie Stowell
9:21

I think what works about TikTok is it's a fandom. And again, it's going back to community. And how do you create fandoms and how do you create spaces where those fandoms can happen? And that's much harder with children, obviously, because they shouldn't be on the wide worldwide internet too much. But if there are created spaces online, there's no space without problems, but some sort of online game or something. Is that is there a space for having a kind of book corner within that? But also I think it's encouraging adults to talk about books because there's probably people who are reading who are not then talking about it with their kids. And how do you get that conversation going? And I think some of it could be modelling it. And I mean, one of the kind of shocking things in the stats was how little parents enjoy reading to their kids. That really made me quite sad. And I think if there's ways of kind of showing that in media, showing modelling sounds very dry, but I mean it's literally showing someone reading a book to a child and showing it being fun. And more, you know, whatever Jack and Ori, that kind of thing. A lot of people aren't watching live TV anyway, or or even traditional media, and it's how you do that through other channels.

Katy
10:20

Jenny Hawke, chair of the Youth Libraries Group and a librarian in Bromley, talks about what libraries offer families and young people. She also emphasises the importance of collaboration between public libraries and schools, and that when done well, it leads to family reading and everyone using the library.

Jenny Hawke
10:36

In the public library, we do have a lot of children. They are coming in, they're coming in on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes we get the same children coming in every week, and obviously, we have chatterbooks groups as well. So the eight to eleven-year-olds have just had a chatterbooks group today, in fact. And they were so excited, and they were doing this quiz, and they were so sort of competitive and really wanted to get the answers. We had all the books all over the table, and so from that side of things, I can see that they're actually like really into reading. Some of them had done reviews of the books that they took at home last time, last month, and some of them hadn't, but they were still chatting about the books and talking. The volume does get like really loud at some points. But then obviously, I do know from the national picture and the National Literacy Trust's latest report on reading for pleasure, and that there has been a decline. And I suppose our role in the public libraries, particularly, because that's where my experience is, but I'm sure also in the school library is just to try and reignite some of that passion for reading, and that's what we try and do, and we look at the different factors like their access to books, and I suppose the children that are coming into the library are coming in because the parents are bringing them into the library, their carers are bringing them into the library, and then I had a class visit coming in. Now that's slightly different because the school is bringing them in. But what's really lovely is we definitely noticed that link with the school and public libraries is so important because you know that is where we are reaching those children that might not actually come in with their parents, but they're coming in with the schools, and so often we will notice, like maybe even that evening or at the weekend on a Saturday, if they have had a session in the library with a member of staff, then they will come back with their parents, which is really lovely. And we always make sure they get the colouring letter saying, Oh, we went to the library today, we visited the library, and it's very easy to join your child up to the library. So that's really important to give them that, to give them a bookmark and just give them a really good experience in the library so that they they will come back again. Saturday mornings are really peak times when families are coming in and we have this sorter where all the books are getting returned through the self-service. And so sometimes I take a photo of it because I just think, wow, you know, we are absolutely run off our feet, but this is amazing that all these kids are returning all these books. So I think the space is really important, and I think that's important for the school libraries as well, for a place to go and for there to be somebody there, a trained person who can chat to them about what books they want to borrow. And it's always important that we always say there's always members of staff so you can come and talk to them. I think forging links between public libraries and schools is really paramount. And we're taking the authors into the library and then inviting the schools to come into the library, but we're also doing online events with schools and with our authors. In our particular authority, we're quite lucky in that we have a secondary school librarian network. So we get invited to their meetings, and we always make sure that we organise something for them every term. So for the secondary schools, we organize a fully booked quiz. The school librarians bring about seven or eight year sevens or year eights, and we have about eight or nine secondary schools taking part, and they absolutely love it, and they are so competitive. Making connections and working collectively with other organisations. For example, we're part of the Spine Festival, so normally it's an annual festival where 16 boroughs all get together, it's a creative arts festival, and it's organized by Apples and Snakes, the spoken word organization. And we have all these events and activities, some of them are school, some of them are public, but you really feel part of something, and I think a lot of those events have definitely had an impact, and there's usually always some sort of performance at the end where the parents all come. And I remember once we had this end performance, and then all the parents joined the library, the siblings joined the library. So I think definitely working collectively with other organisations really helped. And sometimes those can just be like local organisations, like a local arts society once said, right, we've got some money, we want it to be spent on a creative arts project for the library. Can you help us? So we thought, oh, it would be wonderful to have a mural in the library, and then we've got some children from the local primary school from years five and six. Loretta Schauer actually came and she helped the children to design this mural. So I think all those things, however local or regional or national, because we always try in the public libraries to promote like National Nonfiction November and National Share a Story Month and Book Trust initiatives as well. So I think working collaboratively is key.

Katy
17:24

Finally, we hear from author Sita Brahmachari advocating a movement that puts reading at the heart of every childhood.

Sita Brahmachari
17:31

Leadership is absolutely vital. So it needs to come from the top of every school. It needs to take all of these agencies in connection with the head teachers of every school in the country, either through some kind of enormous coming-togethers of people in theaters or whatever, big spaces. It's a movement. You need to ignite it. So we need to make reading at the heart of every childhood. That means from preschool, as Frank Cultural Voice is doing, to 18 and then beyond into higher education. Reading is the hearth of education. It is the place around which everything gathers. To explore anything within school, you need to read. And you cannot go forward. You cannot thrive. You will be hungry all your life. Physically, probably as well. One in three children in our schools is hungry. So when they leave school and their literacy rates are so low, they probably will also be hungry in their emotional well-being and their ability to imagine different futures and create different futures for themselves. There is, in my opinion, a crisis of creativity within the education system. And that crisis of creativity is stifling our young people. And many of my stories have been made, books on prescription, by reading agencies about they can help young people with their well-being. And I'm very proud of that. My dad was a doctor, he would have thought that was really quite strange. But actually, he wasn't a doctor that was wanting to prescribe people lots of pills. He actually was someone that said, Well, maybe if you're feeling stressed, walk in nature a little bit. So I think we need to refocus, as with Shore Start, a future for every child, the well-being of every child to thrive, and that reading is absolutely at the heart of it all. The scale that we need needs to be that all of the amazing educators, the librarians, all of the amazing people in the book agencies, we need to come together and in unity, and we need to say, right, this needs to change. Which means that it goes through teacher training, which means if I want to be a teacher, I need to have this vision of stimulating the whole of the creative child, making sure that they and their families, their guardians have the opportunity to thrive. I mean, I call it reading to thrive. It's not just to survive, it's not just to pass the test, it's to thrive. And as you go through life, you're going to face difficulties, you're going to have challenges. Reading has been my absolute anchor and my absolute sale in my life. And writing is absolutely connected to that. I think that also the stats around creative writing and the enjoyment in creative writing have gone down. For myself, I have my patchwork storytelling quilt. And when I go and speak to children in schools, I say, okay, we're going to talk, you're going to doodle listen for a while. Children that maybe find it hard to kind of concentrate for large, long times. They're doodling, they're drawing pictures and symbols of what you're talking about, little memories of what you've said, they're writing it all down, and they have a patchwork piece. Why can't we go through the whole of a school day collecting inspirational patchwork pieces and writing them down and having a little quilt at the end of the day that you can go back and share with your family? This is not like a bespoke project that only privileged children can do. I work in all schools, but I think it's very, very interesting that fee-paying schools really prioritize the humanities and the arts. So that you will go to schools which will have wonderful theatres. You will go to schools that think art is an really important part of the school day for the children, and sports, and the whole child. So I think we need to really throw up in the air what we have been doing. The world has changed, our worlds have changed, and we need to step up altogether. And we need to look at what children and what childhood needs now. So it's a very hopeful thing is that we now have a policy by the end of the term. Of this government of a library in every primary school. But a library without, with the pressures of things still carrying on, a library without a creative approach is a room with books in it. So how do we bring the children that haven't had a book at home, which is many children, haven't had a culture in their families of reading? How do we get those children to make that library the hearth of their education? You do that by bringing in every generation to activities, to creative things where perhaps adults who might not have high literary race themselves, they understand that they belong in that place. You know, reading is a place of belonging. Reading is a home. And you see this sometimes with refugee children, and what they bring is they have a book on their back. They bring a book from home. Sometimes that can be the place where they have a home when they don't have a home outside it. So we need to make the library in every primary school a hearth and a home to the community so that it's the place, not just the children who might be ahead with reading, or maybe the children who need to find a place of harm and comfort within a very noisy space. Not only those children, but every child needs to know what that library can do for them. But if those libraries don't yet have librarians, that means every teacher needs to be demonstrating and using that library at the core of their work. And obviously, I do believe that there needs to be a librarian in every primary school to be with those books to help properly expand what the impact on creativity in education can be. And I think that that needs to go across the board into secondary school too. And you need to keep injecting new inspirations. We need to be looking at what things really are working and then bringing a new inspiration. So children who are in a school and young adults in a secondary school can feel this sort of kinetic energy behind the force that reading has in their lives. And it doesn't stop, it just keeps on rolling. So that when you enter a school, preschool, nursery, you feel it. And by the time you're leaving the school, you feel it. It doesn't drop off in year eight when you're too busy because you're doing your A-levels or GCSEs or whatever. We know that this is what education is, we know that this is what a lifelong opportunity is, we know that this is what awe and wonder is and imagination is. And this is a path which will help you to grow in empathy through your life and to discover things that you never thought you would discover.

Katy
24:54

So lots of ideas there about how we can all support reading for pleasure.

Ali
24:58

Yeah, it's important, and particularly in the national year of reading, to think about the role that everyone's got to play in encouraging reading for pleasure.

Katy
25:06

Yeah, it's all too easy to just leave it to schools or leave it to parents. But I think what all of our interviewees have made clear is that actually it is about having approaches that involve everybody. If it's in school, it's not just in English lessons, it's not just the library's problem. It's something that everyone should be involved in. And the importance of getting parents involved and the importance of access to books and libraries. So in the next episode, we have asked people what if they could do one thing, what would it be?

Ali
25:36

And we'd love to hear from you. We've been discussing all the different things around reading for pleasure and how we've got to this place where we need a national year of reading again. So we'd love to hear what your thoughts are. And if you could do one thing, what would that be? Yo

Ali
25:51

u can email us at info at mostlybooktalk.com or you can engage with us on the socials at mostlybooktalk. So join us for part six of our five-part series.

Katy
26:02

Yes, it's a good thing we're not doing a math series.