A depressing piece of news came late last year. In its annual survey of British children, the National Literacy Trust found only 35 per cent of those from 8 to 18 were willing to say they enjoyed reading — the lowest level since the survey kicked off 19 years ago. The gender gap had widened in the data; while girls have a 50-50 chance of answering “yes”, the figure stands at only 28.2 per cent for boys. Everyone adjacent to the book world has their own opinion on this decline. Some down-on-their-luck children’s authors and illustrators blame it on celebrities like David Walliams, whose Dahl-esque comedy books saturate the bestseller charts. (“Start promoting other writers,” said one.) Another talked about a post-2014 slide into “politicised, socially progressive drivel”. (This is neutralised in part by the continued existence of the Walliams Regime; one left commentator told him off for writing “sneering fatshaming grim nonsense”.)
“Books went from this to this,” said one X account, by way of explanation. He attached a photo of a 1965 Ladybird book about Richard the Lionheart and juxtaposed it with The Fart that Changed the World, a new medieval caper by comedy actor Stephen Mangan. The post had 19,000 likes, but it didn’t seem right to me. I was at primary school just before smartphones got big and years before decolonisation became even a minority educational concern; the boys in my class played combative imaginary games at playtime, but when they had to read, they loved the vulgarity and deliberate transgression of series like Captain Underpants. One classmate enjoyed reading about the Battle of Hastings, but he had what was probably Asperger’s Syndrome — his enthusiasm wasn’t treated as a “boys will be boys” tendency as much as a personal quirk.
I got fiercely ratioed when I pointed out that “Strong Medieval Man” moralism was no likelier to get boys reading than the established villain, “HR manager” moral messaging. Someone said I probably had no positive relationships with any of the men in my life; another accused me of trying to control boys and turn them to “femslop”. “Why are stupid women always trying to tell boys what they should like?” he said. “Let them read of Aslan,” said another account. But C.S. Lewis is still in print, as are Rowling, Riordan, Blyton, and Tolkien. A Google search for “children’s books upcoming” returns plenty of lists by publishers, bookshops and charities featuring offerings clearly aimed at boys, with a minimum of feminisation: male protagonists; zany illustrations; raucous comedy; sci-fi, horror and adventure settings. Children’s comics and graphic novels, often aimed at reluctant male readers, are selling at an all-time high in the UK.
The more obvious explanation for the across-the-board decline: a new industry predicates itself on children not reading
On closer examination of the NLT data, the twelve-point gender gap in 2024 is roughly consistent with the overall data from all but two of the past 15 years — those narrowings, in 2020 and 2023, are explained by drop-offs in girls replying “yes.” The more-or-less bilateral decrease might discount Culture War explanations, which link the drop in boys’ reading to the recent gender politics of the children’s publishing industry. Another chart breaks it down by both gender and age. Both sexes enjoy reading the most during primary school and suffer a bilateral drop-off in the 11-14 age group, which remains more or less consistent through the GCSE years. Girls seem to start enjoying it again post-16, but boys don’t; at this point the gender gap widens from 15 to 24 percentage points, which suggests the feminisation issue the data suggests might actually lie more with adult publishing. Girls in their late teens get access to viral sensations in the romance and fantasy niches, but the “reluctant male reader” seems to slip unscathed into adulthood, where there are no prizes for attracting or retaining him.
The more obvious explanation for the across-the-board decline: a new industry predicates itself on children not reading. The long empty waits of childhood were worth nothing to anyone twenty years ago, but to today’s tech execs and “content creators” they are development opportunities, ready to mine for ad money. If Dahl’s Matilda were set today, the heroine would probably have had her attention span eviscerated with CoCoMelon videos before ever getting to touch a real book. The publishing industry is powerless; even the most raucous books for reluctant boys dim in comparison to the fast cuts, bright colours and infinite-scroll mechanisms you’ll find on apps like YouTube Kids. The data seems to support this hypothesis; most British children are given smartphones at the start of secondary school, which correlates to the bilateral drop in reading enjoyment when we reach the 11-14 age range, and the post-COVID era saw overall yearly numbers average out to their lowest levels in 19 years. We might attribute part of this to a knock-on effect from poor intervention during the pandemic, perhaps due to clunky technology or untrained parents. But it is impossible to ignore another clash with the mainstreaming of the TikTok-style short video format, which is designed to encourage compulsive use.
Before I got my first smartphone at 13, I read for hours every night — often the same books over and over again, and often classic American children’s fiction bought from charity shops.
Once I was able to get online at all hours, I suddenly became a reluctant reader
Moralism is nothing new in children’s publishing; try Pollyanna, about the makings of a grating optimist, or What Katy Did, an ascetic tract from the 1870s about a little girl who is bedridden after falling off her swing. (Her adult cousin, quite possibly the worst character in all of English literature, coaches her through an imaginary “School of Pain” so she might master the Christian virtues of “Patience” and “Cheerfulness”). I was only able to immerse myself in these dubious classics because I had nothing else to do. Once I was able to get online at all hours, I suddenly became a reluctant reader.
At that age I was obsessed with the “Trivia” sections on IMDb; the only works of fiction I found myself reading enthusiastically were the ones that had been adapted into controversial films with an air of awe and mystique around them, like Lolita and A Clockwork Orange. I would probably have read de Sade if he had been made available to me. The extra distraction meant I had lost any semblance of interest in moralistic, “improving” books, and certainly in anything explicitly written for “young readers”. If I got lost in a book with my phone still in the room it was because I saw the act of reading at that moment as more transgressive than scrolling through Instagram.
We’ve got to reverse-psychology it: reading will be more fun as an act of rebellion
This might be a good lesson for our technological future. Phones will always be more magnetic than books, but provocation trumps all in the mind of a child. There is probably more of a place for The Fart that Changed the World than What Katy Did, but there are plenty of “dangerous” children’s authors held in genuine high regard: Roald Dahl published plenty of horror stories for adults alongside his children’s books, and Rumer Godden wrote about conscious dolls with the same style and tension found in the sexier Black Narcissus. Snooty didacticism should not be welcome from either the right or the left. You shouldn’t ply your eight-year-old with Nabokov, but it might not be the worst parenting move to leave a book lying around in their line of sight and imply that it contains some sort of knowledge they are not allowed to have. We’ve got to reverse-psychology it: reading will be more fun as an act of rebellion.
