What makes children read?

Children's writers Michael Rosen, Anne Fine, Jacqueline Wilson and Quentin Blake pooled their favourite tales to celebrate the children's laureateship’s 10th birthday this week. Children's book sales have been climbing year on year since records began in 1998. The market is worth between £274.4 million and £329.7 million, depending on whether or not there is a Harry Potter hardback out.

J K Rowling and Philip Pullman may skew the figures, but even without them, children have a fantastic choice of reading. "Between the ages of four and nine," Michael Rosen says, "reading books is regarded as optional. Some schools take it seriously, but others say there is no time and fall back on worksheets that are torn-up extracts of books. It is really dangerous. Children don't even read the whole chapter,” he told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. “The idea of engaging with what happens, with the thoughts and feelings of a story, has disappeared.” "It is not built into most schools' ethos. If we want children to have access to complex ideas then the most fruitful way is the reading of whole books."

When the five laureates were asked to nominate their favourite seven books for a Waterstone’s list, there was a heavy bias to the classics. Anne Fine plumped for her long-time hero, Just William – "Every child's perfect imaginary companion: lippy, irrepressible and inventive to an almost pathological degree." Jacqueline Wilson (whose books account for £5 million of the market) chose Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Railway Children by E Nesbit and Mary Poppins by P L Travers. Quentin Blake nominated Edward Ardizzone's Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain 1936. No one chose J K Rowling's Harry Potter and no one mentioned Philip Pullman.

The role of Children's Laureate, which has bursary of £10,000, is awarded once every two years to an eminent writer or illustrator of children's books to celebrate outstanding achievement in their field. The idea for the Children's Laureate originated from a conversation between (the then) Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and children's writer Michael Morpurgo. The illustrator Quentin Blake who brought to life the famous Roald Dahl stories was the first Children's Laureate.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children