We've been thinking about reading all wrong!
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May 2026 · Little Book Factory Blog
There's a big report doing the rounds this month, and frankly, it should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever watched a child's face light up over a story — or watched that same light quietly switch off the moment someone hands them a worksheet.
New research from HarperCollins and Farshore's Annual Review of Children's Reading for Pleasure has identified what they're calling a critical paradox at the heart of how we approach books with children:
"Parents and schools both recognise that reading for pleasure matters — but their understandable focus on literacy skills is actively undermining it."
In other words: the harder we push children to learn to read, the less they actually want to.
The numbers are hard to ignore
The report's findings paint a sobering picture of where children's reading for pleasure stands today. Just 25% of 5–17 year-olds now read for fun four or more times a week — down from 39% in 2012. The proportion of children who rarely or never read has tripled in that same period. And perhaps most striking of all: 35% of 11–13 year-olds believe reading is "more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do."
That last one is the one that really gets us. More than a third of pre-teens have already decided that reading belongs in the same mental box as spelling tests and comprehension exercises. Not wonder. Not adventure. Not possibility. Just homework.
When reading becomes a subject, something is lost
The research highlights something that parents and teachers witness every day without perhaps having the language for it: many children's very first experience of books is as a skill to be assessed, rather than a world to tumble into. For children who weren't read to before school, the first encounter with a book is already framed as performance. And once that association is formed, it's hard to shake.
72% of children aged 5–17 say they'd rather watch TV, play video games, or go online than read books. That's not a technology problem. That's a joy problem. Children choose things that feel good. Reading needs to feel like one of those things again.
This is exactly why Little Book Factory exists
At Little Book Factory, we've always believed in something that this research is now confirming at scale: the moment you make reading and writing about achievement, you've already lost half the magic.
We don't make books for children to be assessed on. We make books by children — stories dreamed up, written, and celebrated by the very people who should be the heroes of this whole conversation. Because here's what we know to be true: a child who has made a book looks at every other book differently. They see possibility. They see themselves in it.
Writing your own story isn't a literacy exercise. It's an act of imagination. It's a child saying: I have something to say, and it's worth reading. Oh and it's fun!
What can we actually do about this?
The report calls for reading to be restored as a joyful tradition — and we're all for that. But joy doesn't arrive on demand. It's built through experience, through laughter over a silly plot twist, through a child reading back their own words and bursting with pride.
Here's our take on small things that make a huge difference:
Let children choose. A book they picked themselves — even if it's about dinosaurs for the fourteenth time, even if it seems too easy — is infinitely more powerful than one they were assigned.
Read alongside them, not at them. Children who see adults genuinely lost in a book learn something no lesson plan can teach: that reading is for grown-ups too, and it must be worth something.
Celebrate the story, not the spelling. When a child writes something down, the first question should be "what happens next?" — not "is that how you spell dragon?"
Make them the author. Because authors are cool. Authors are powerful. Authors made the very books that changed your life.
The good news
Buried in the research are some real green shoots — particularly among older children. When the conditions are right, when reading is social, when it's chosen freely, when it's celebrated rather than graded, children and teenagers genuinely do engage. The appetite is there. It just needs the right invitation.
That's the invitation we try to extend every single day. Not: "Here is a skill you must acquire." But: "Here is a blank page, and it's yours. What's going to happen?"
Reading for pleasure changes children's lives — it makes them happier, healthier, and more empathetic. If we really value the futures of the children we work with, we need to prioritise it above almost everything else.
We couldn't agree more. And we'd add just one thing: let's not forget writing for pleasure too. Because sometimes the most powerful reader is the one who has already been an author.
Every child has a story worth telling. Let's help them tell it. — Little Book Factory