Bird's song

In the first of her regular blogs, Chief Executive Viv Bird gives a talk at an education forum, recommends books for teenagers and wonders what we can do to get more dads reading with their kids.

My nephew aged nearly four was heartbroken that he wasn't well enough yesterday to get to his nursery school dressed as his favourite book character. Fortunately his dad read him his favourite stories and he went to bed in his book-character pyjamas. With thousands of World Book Day celebrations happening in schools, libraries and bookshops, an exciting longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the announcement of Hilary Mantel as the well-deserved winner of the prestigious David Cohen Prize for Literature, which awards lifetime literary achievement, it's been a great week for book lovers.  

Yet a study launched yesterday, What Kids Are Reading, carried out for Renaissance Learning by Dundee University, says that teenagers tend to read books that are not challenging enough. The suggestion that once children have read the Harry Potter series they have nothing to read, is simply not true. The UK's contemporary children's literature is rich and challenging, can help teenagers develop historical perspective, relax through humour, fantasy or dystopian worlds, explore personal issues and develop an understanding of different cultures. With brilliant authors such as Booktrust's former Teenage Prize winner Gregory Hughes with Unhooking the Moon, Marcus Zusak's The Book Thief, the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness, Sally Gardner's books, to name just a few, there's a world to discover - check out Booktrust's book recommendations for children, teenagers and young adults

Last week I spoke at a Westminster Education Forum event on the English Curriculum proposed Programme of Study. Heavy stuff, you might say. Teachers expressed concern about the curriculum proposals being too prescriptive with too many set texts. One teacher talked about the challenge of choosing between teaching 'meaty' texts where there is real literary appreciation, while encouraging young people to 'skim read' lots of books. There's a lot of angst about what children and young people should be reading. As a teenager, I devoured romance books and only rediscovered contemporary classics at age 15 thanks to the recommendations of a brilliant English teacher.

I have been pondering about why the English curriculum needs to go into so much detail about learning spelling, grammar and punctuation, without a strong health warning that reading also needs to be taught in context, and in a creative and inspiring way. Our challenge is to help individual young people find books that they want to read. They need to read more. Rather than being prescriptive about what children should be reading for pleasure (heaven forbid), find out which books children are already reading and why - and talk to them about what interests them even if they can't name a book they like. An article or book about fishing, a favourite film, Man United's successes (or otherwise) might be just the trigger that's needed.

My point is, while teachers can't be expected to do it all, let us at least start the discussions about reading, what, when, why. Getting parents doing their bit helps teachers too, which is why we launched the Get Dads Reading campaign last month with a survey that showed that only 1 in 8 dads were the main family reader. On the Today programme, I said that what I would really like to see happen is for dads to be as confident and sure about their role as a parent reader as they were in the kitchen cooking. Just think about all the TV programmes and newspaper features on men cooking. In other words, more dads talking about reading with their children, their favourite stories to read aloud, and especially what their sons like to read.  This would help address the isolation felt by many dads, especially those separated from their families, and who need a bit of encouragement to read more with their children. Finally, my answer to one of the blogs: 'Why should dads have to be the main parent reader to children, as long as one of the parents is doing it'? They don't, but dads do need to be seen to read, and to read with their kids and give reading some status within the family, and especially read to their sons as well as to their daughters. It really will make a difference to their life chances - and it will be a fun thing to do!

Footnote

I loved Bring Up the Bodies, but I also recommend that you read one of Hilary Mantel's brilliant but very different book, A Climate of Change.