Children facing a ‘happiness recession’, says award winner Frank Cottrell-Boyce | Books

Children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce is calling on Keir Starmer’s government to “stand up and give a visible sign that this country values ​​its children”.

The author is holding a children’s reading summit in Liverpool on Wednesday, where the Children’s Commissioner for England, Rachel de Souza, and former Children’s Laureates Michael Rosen and Cressida Cowell are also due to speak.

The Reading Rights Summit is part of Cottrell-Boyce’s wider campaign to address the “invisible privilege and inequality” of children’s reading.

The event will feature speeches and panels made up of professionals across education, science, health and policy to share best practice and make recommendations to policy makers.

Cottrell-Boyce, who was announced as a Children’s Laureate last July, wants to “turn the dial” on the conversation about reading. “People always think about it in terms of educational attainment and cultural capital, and those things are really important. But I also want to highlight the health benefits and the mental health benefits.”

He wants to “move the conversation, for now, out of school” and into homes and nurseries. His speech at the summit will highlight research from BookTrust which found that six in 10 parents and carers of 0- to seven-year-olds wish they had known earlier how important reading with their children is.

“We know that if you come to school where you’ve never been read to, you’ve got this huge disadvantage. Your first encounter with a book is like this kind of alien piece of kit” that you have to decode. “You’re at a huge disadvantage compared to kids whose first experience of a book is propped up on the couch.”

In her speech, Cottrell-Boyce will also draw attention to children “who, instead of turning the pages, try to swipe them or make the pictures grow bigger with their fingers”.

Children are facing a “happiness recession” which “really puzzles me and makes me anxious”, Cottrell-Boyce said. He noted that children have “beared the brunt of a number of crises” – austerity, the pandemic and Brexit. “They hit all children first and hardest.”

Alex McCormick – who raised more than £250,000 for the Spellow Hub library burnt down by rioters last summer – will also speak at the summit. “My award-winning career began under the harsh light of the burning of a library,” said Cottrell-Boyce. “The people who did it didn’t know how to understand the world.”

Cottrell-Boyce said the focus on early years literacy requires an “act of courage” by the government because the results will play out “in 20 years’ time” rather than in the short term. But “it can be done quite easily” – “so many of the problems we face seem intractable, and I think it’s completely solvable”.

“We need Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson, Lisa Nandy – and more – to come together and help us ensure that every child has access to books, reading and the transformative ways in which they improve long-term life chances”, Cottrell-Boyce said. “Simply put, shared reading is an effective, cost-effective health intervention that should be available to everyone.”