Reading For Pleasure Changes Lives Forever! 

18 June 2026

Far from it. Back then, in the 1970s, schoolwork usually meant taking notes in silence while a teacher dictated them, then regurgitating them in an essay or a test.

But I remember one teacher who did things differently: a certain Mr Evans. On a Friday afternoon when everyone was bored and tired and fighting – he would stop everything, and just read to us. He read us ancient Greek and Roman myths. Stories of gods, heroes, monsters. I was spellbound, and so was everyone else.

Mr Evans never tested us on the myths. We didn't have to write anything about them. We were only asked to listen and enjoy.

So you could say there was no measurable outcome or value to those lessons. But not everything that has value can be measured, and not everything that can be measured has value! Those were the lessons I looked forward to, and they're the ones that stayed with me. They gave me a foundation course in the mythic that I think underlies everything I write. Without Mr Evans, I would never have written the books I've written.

When I started working on Varjak Paw, my first book, I wanted to write a thrilling, mythic story about a cat learning to be a great warrior. I never imagined it might be read in schools one day. I was just trying to write a story I loved myself: one that had all the action and adventure, all the magic and wonder that I loved in my own favourite stories. So I gave it everything I had, working on draft after draft, year after year, until it was the very best book I could write.

But then Varjak Paw was put on a reading list by an organisation called the CLPE: the Centre For Literacy In Primary Education. It's an amazing organisation which believes that reading for pleasure is the most important thing schools can enable kids to do. They believe that sharing great books is the key to this. So they curate brilliant booklists of the best children's literature, with fantastic resources to support them, and offer all sorts of training to help teachers do this work.

I began to be invited into schools where teachers were reading Varjak Paw with their classes. I saw for myself the impact they were having. These schools were very different from the one I went to. Mr Evans and his myths would have been very much at home here. Because they had a vibrant culture of reading for pleasure, and it was obvious how much fun they were having – and how much they were learning.

I met kids who'd never liked reading before, but got it when they read Varjak Paw, and now couldn't stop. Often, they'd been inspired to create their own stories and artwork. Something genuinely life-changing was going on.

Something similar is now happening with my latest book, Tyger, which the CLPE has included in its Power Of Reading and Reflecting Realities booklists. Tyger is a page-turning adventure story about a boy, a girl and a tyger – but it's also a story that embodies everything I believe about the power of books and reading and writing; art and drawing and creativity. I've put everything I know and love into it. So it's incredibly inspiring to see the extraordinary work teachers and librarians are doing with it, and all the excitement they're generating with it.

As a children's author who is constantly visiting schools, I can tell you that kids still love books whenever they're given the opportunity to do so. If there is a crisis in children's reading, it's a crisis of opportunity. Time and again, I've seen the life-changing impact reading for pleasure can have on even the most so-called "reluctant readers". It's totally transformative, enriching every aspect of their lives.

It's been such an honour for me to do this work with CLPE over the years. And now it's wonderful to work with A New Direction too, delivering masterclasses with CLPE to share everything we've learned.

Because it turns out that reading for pleasure has the biggest positive impact of any factor on children's life chances, outweighing even socio-economic background. The research is very clear on this. Reading for pleasure is all about fun, with no strings attached – yet there really is nothing more important.

When you share a book with your class, and let them enjoy it, you will create new readers and writers. It might not feel like that; you may wonder if you're getting through, as I'm sure my teachers wondered about me! But take it from an author who was once a child in someone's class. We authors try to write books that thrill readers, igniting their imaginations with magic and wonder. But I think the real magic happens when educators bring stories to life for kids – and change their lives forever!