Bm@il: 'Kindle worm' - not a computer virus but perhaps the future of children's reading

Feb 15 2012 by Alan Hayes, Uxbridge Gazette

GET off the couch, remove the games consoles from your children’s bedrooms and stock up their bookshelves… now.

A study by the National Literacy Trust found that children with no books at home had lower levels of attainment, negative attitudes to reading and read less frequently.

Research showed that almost 40 per cent of the 18,000 youngsters surveyed, aged between eight and 17, live in homes with 10 or fewer books, but 85 per cent of eight to 15-year-olds own a games console.

Of course not everyone is born to be a bookworm. At primary school I had a friend whose mother nagged him relentlessly because he never read anything.

I thought this was mean because, as a star footballer, he spent all his time practising nifty footwork; I even went to see him play in a schoolboy final at the Aston Villa ground. I suppose he might have been interested in Enid Blyton if we’d kidded him her Famous Five books had been about five-a-side footballers.

Ms Blyton may have fallen out of fashion in recent years but she introduced generations of children like me to the joys of reading, which is something I’ve never lost, thanks to the likes of The Ring O’Bells Mystery, The Gay Story Book (really) and The Secret Seven.

Now, of course, we are in the age of the e-book reader, which some people think will threaten the popular paperback. I’m not so sure it will.

I think there’s a place for these gadgets – the most famous currently being Kindle – because you can download tons of titles rather than use your luggage allowance on blockbusters and Aga Sagas when you go on holiday. For everyday use it’s better than not reading at all.

Mr F thinks he’ll get an e-reader, or maybe we’d better get two. It’s not like the telly, is it, where any number of you have to share a screen?

We’ll still continue to buy books, as you can’t beat the smell and feel of the real thing. However, we may soon need to move house to find enough space to hold them all.