SAD DECLINE IN CHILDREN READING BECAUSE THEY PREFER SCREENS TO BOOKS
FEWER children are enjoying reading as they prefer screens to the pages of a book, new research reveals. Just 25.8 per cent of youngsters read every day last year, according to figures published to mark World Book Day today.
This is the lowest level the National Literacy Trust has recorded since it first surveyed children in 2005. And only just over half (53 per cent) described reading as something they enjoy “very much” or “quite a lot” – the lowest level since 2013.
Now the NLT is calling on the nation to participate in an unprecedented mass action and Share a Million Stories in a bid to enthuse younger readers.
Past research shows that
Sleepwalker, a series of rolling blackouts are plunging Manchester into darkness, while Waits is sitting in an abandoned hospital ward watching a murderer slowly die – in case he makes a final confession. Featuring police corruption, gangsters and drugs, it makes for compelling reading.
While Joe’s books are rooted in Manchester, Jack Reacher has an entire continent at his disposal, and has been known to travel to the UK too.
Of making Reacher an American, Birmingham-born Lee explains: “Obviously the market in the States is much bigger and, shared reading, for just 10 minutes a day, can have long-lasting positive impacts on a child’s future. In schools, stadiums and TV studios, in bedrooms, bookshops, libraries and prisons – the plan is for hundreds of thousands of stories to be read across the UK and Ireland today.
At the beginning of World Book Day week, more than 180,000 stories have been shared already. Cassie Chadderton, World Book Day CEO, said: “Year on year, the evidence grows that
World Book Day is having a positive impact on the reading
to be honest, the willingness to experiment and try a new author is much better. But it was really about the character, the knight errant, the wanderer. In Britain, Reacher would run out of space!”
Taking up the thread on the appeal of crime fiction, Joe adds: “One thing I think appeals to everyone is that there is a sense of resolution and justice in crime fiction. It’s interesting that as the world increasingly feels as though it lacks resolution and justice, crime fiction is becoming more popular.”
Lee continues: “If you disappoint a reader, the kind of guy who buys his book at
WORDS OF ADVICE: Lee Child with Joseph Knox behaviour of our children and young people. Putting more books into the hands of children and young people and, at the same time, encouraging everyone, everywhere to get into the habit of sharing stories regularly, World Book Day is helping create readers.”
Funded by publishers and booksellers, and sponsored by National Book Tokens, World Book Day reaches more than 15 million children and young people in 45,000 schools every year.
For the first time, World Book Day is partnering with McDonald’s, who are printing World Book Day tokens worth £1 on all Happy Meal boxes until March 17, giving millions of families free access to the exclusive World Book Day books from bookshops and supermarkets.
Gatwick Airport once a year on his way on holiday, if you let that guy down, he might never read another book!”
Joe, who grew up in Stoke and Manchester, adds: “Someone will say, ‘I picked up Sirens, I don’t read, I never read,’ and in some cases, ‘I’ve never read a book before, but I absolutely loved it and it sent me off to all these other things’.”
Lee says: “It’s truly a lovely compliment. Ironically the best compliment you can get is from people who barely read at all.
“I’ve had it said to me dozens of times, ‘I loved your book, I finished it’.” Yet despite the popularity of crime writing among readers, the world of high-brow literary fiction has been slow to acknowledge their better-selling cousins.
Even for Lee, 65 – recently announced as a judge for this year’s prestigious Booker prize award for literary fiction – it’s been a hardfought battle for recognition.
“The weight of sales and profile I eventually got forced these people to grudgingly have a look and try one. I was the guilty pleasure people would mention during interviews in order to indicate how hip they were,” he says.
“But why is there this assumption that it’s easier to satisfy a huge audience than a tiny audience? In reality, it’s exactly the reverse.
“It’s easy to satisfy a tiny audience and very hard to satisfy a broad audience and I think people are finally recognising that. Henry
James said easy reading is hard writing and that’s the truth of it.”
Lee – whose own protagonist was controversially played on the big screen in two movies by Tom Cruise, prompting a backlash from fans claiming the actor was too small for
6ft 5in Reacher – offers some advice to Joe:
“Forget the movies, long-form, streamed television is the way to go. That’s the natural home of a novel.
“Movies are totally dependent on star casting to provide the financing. As a friend
Tom Cruise is great, as an actor he’s supertalented, as a theorist of story he’s incredibly accomplished, he was just not the right physical fit for Reacher.”
Indeed, following the interview, it was announced this week that the TV rights to Sirens, Joe’s 2017 debut had been snapped up by a production company.
LEE, who was famously made redundant by Granada Television after two decades, adds: “I was 40 when I started, and I’d spent about 37 of those 40 years reading constantly and really that’s the only training to be a writer.
“My Granada redundancy left me with seven months living money, seven mortgage payments, and so I had to get this book written and sold in seven months.
“So it was very hyper-focused but it’s not true to say I sat down with a commercial focus, I sat down with no focus at all. The more you plan and analyse the worse it gets. I just had to write what I thought by instinct and even then, it was an absolute lottery.
“Are any other human beings going to respond to this? Of course, whatever you do, there’s going to be a few thousand people who like it.The question was, is it going to be 10,000 people, is it going to be 100,000? Is it going to be a million people?
“My first book, Killing Floor, took me five months to write and get into a sales state and then it was sold. I had six weeks left, one mortgage payment left in the bank.”
He adds: “It was a slow build, it was eight years until I got my first number one and that’s universally true. It takes you 10 years to become an overnight success.”
But, three years into his own stellar career, will it really take Joe that long?