National Literacy Trust stats this week make for unhappy reading: unhappy reading, of course, being the problem at hand. Two-thirds of children in the UK don’t read for pleasure; four in five don’t read daily. This is the single biggest year-on-year fall in reading enjoyment ever recorded. It’s hard not to feel bleak: as a person who has written children’s books, is an earnest volunteer librarian and who reads near-constantly, it’s pretty depressing to feel part of a doomed culture.
It’s also pretty depressing, honestly, because books are so nice. We talk a lot about how vital reading is as a skill, or a developmental milestone; we go heavy on books as nutrition and education, a kind of eat-your-greens approach to literature that makes books (much like greens) seem less delicious than they are. We aren’t good enough, I think, at sharing books as a source of joy.