In this extract from his article for the Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2026, Tom Tivnan explores reading for pleasure, a key issue facing children’s publishing.
The Waterstones Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce hit the nail on the head when the NLT survey came out in describing the benefits of reading for pleasure as an ‘invisible privilege’. It is that invisibility that is the problem – a reversal of the slide requires investment from governments from which the positive outcomes may not be visible for a generation. It is a rare politician who has the courage to look beyond the next election cycle – or even the next 24-hour news cycle.
But the book trade is taking steps both because politicians are not, and, quite frankly, since it has skin in the game: if we lose the kids, they won’t grow up to be adult readers and book-buyers. But it should be underscored that most in the children’s sector wholeheartedly and uncynically believe in the ability of books to change lives. There are practical initiatives afoot like the NLT and Penguin Random House-backed Libraries for Primaries project in which the publisher and charity provide books and resources for schools that do not have a library or dedicated reading for pleasure space. The scheme hit its 1,000th opening in June 2024, but there is still some way to go, with nearly 1,900 more schools in Britain still without a library. Doing the maths, that means 2,900 schools in Britain have no state-funded library, a statistic which should enrage any sensible-thinking person.
A number of big houses have recently launched or are kick starting their own schemes, like the Hachette Raising Readers initiative and HarperCollins’ A Year of Reading for Pleasure programme. But many in the trade are urging bigger, broader swings such as a generic publicity campaign, a sort of ‘Got Milk?’ for reading. The UK Publishers Association is seriously mulling this option, though who among its members will pony up the dough remains the sticky question. But with the government’s shameful relative inaction, the trade has come to the conclusion that it cannot afford to do nothing.
Tom Tivnan is Managing Editor of The Bookseller. Tom was a freelance writer and his work has appeared in the Glasgow Herald, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph and the Times Literary Supplement. Before joining The Bookseller in 2007, he worked as a bookseller for Blackwell’s in the UK and for Barnes & Noble in the USA. He wrote the text for Tattooed by the Family Business (Pavilion 2010) and his debut novel is The Esquimaux (Silvertail 2017).
Comments