An unmissable book for every year of your early life – with recommendations from Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Rosen, Katherine Rundell and more
The news about reading in general, and childhood reading in particular, is not good. Last year a National Literacy Trust survey of more than 100,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 18 discovered that the number of children who read for pleasure is the lowest since records of this sort began. Only about a third of children say they actively enjoy reading, and the number who report reading daily in their free time is has halved over the last two decades. It’s down to less than one in five.
Whether we blame this on screens, social media, or on a renewed enthusiasm for healthy outdoor activities, the facts are clear. Children are reading less, taking less pleasure in doing so, and there’s already talk of the dawning of a “post-literate age”. Yet books make available the best, wisest and most beautiful things that humankind has conceived, and children’s literature offers a host of classics, old and new, to be introduced to new generations of readers.
So which books will engage your children in this National Year of Reading? I consulted leading authors to come up with a list of books everyone should read (or have read to them) at least once – one for every year of life up to the age of 25. Not a regimen: a buffet. These are not books to chew dutifully through, but to relish – titles we hope will kindle or rekindle that vital pleasure in the word. And, of course, for every book that appears on this list there are many dozens more that could, or should, have been here.
