Best-selling author & award-winning screenwriter, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, has launched his first reading report as Waterstones Children’s Laureate – it’s a milestone moment in Frank’s ‘angry and political’ tenure as the most prestigious role in children’s books.
The report shares an urgent roadmap to turn children’s reading from ‘an invisible privilege to a universal right’ – as well as a stark warning from Frank about the consequences of continuing to neglect addressing the ‘indefensible’ reading inequality in the UK.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Waterstones Children’s Laureate 2024–2026, said:
“Britain is not an equal society. 4.3 million children are growing up in poverty. When I was named Waterstones Children’s Laureate, I knew I wanted to use my position to campaign for these children, the ones that are being left behind.
I started the ‘Reading Rights’ campaign to highlight this indefensible inequality, but also to say that we can do something about it. We have an astonishingly powerful tool in our hands – shared reading. If you’ve been read to, as a child, by someone who cares about you, you have been given an enormous invisible privilege. If you haven’t been given that privilege, then you’ve been left with an enormous mountain to climb.
During my travels as Waterstones Children’s Laureate I’ve encountered brilliant people and ideas who are already making a difference. We just need to make sure that every child gets a chance to experience that difference. To turn that invisible privilege into a universal right.
This report contains a stark warning. If we vacate that space – where child and story meet, where human love slows the world down and makes it a bit more navigable – we will hand it to something that is not human, that will not slow down, that does not love us. We will be ceding the territory of clam and connection to confusion, anxiety and fury. The mission is urgent. Childhood is fleeting. But the mission is also achievable. And it is full of joy.
I’m asking for government support on a local and national level to make sure this simple, vital experience is available to all. To help us remember who we really are – the storytelling species.”
Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s Reading Rights Summit report from January 2025 can be read here.