The Reading Crisis Doesn't Start With Children
Since we’re on the subject of reading, the Kickstarter for my Dragon Award-winning novel is live and funded to the first stretch goal. Help further beautify the book by unlocking stretch goal 2. Claim early bird rewards before they vanish tonight.
An emerging crisis that’s been the talk of education and publishing is children’s loss of interest in books.
If you’ve spent any time moving in those circles, you’re familiar with the usual suspects. Phones, video games, social media are commonly named culprits. Others pin the blame on Gen Alpha’s fruit fly attention span. Or schools indoctrinating kids to project their feelings onto text instead of teaching them to extract meaning from it.
But new reporting suggests we may be casting blame on the wrong generation.
A HarperCollins study found that only 41 percent of British children under age five were frequently read to at home last year.
That’s a significant decline from 64 percent in 2012. And it suggests that millions of kids were robbed of the chance to fall in love with reading over the course of a decade.
But wait, it gets worse.
Only 36 percent of children between the ages of five and seven were regularly read to at home. And among kids aged eight to ten, the figure plunged to 22 percent.
The natural question is why?
And parents are not going to like the answer.
Read the full post on Substack.
SOULDANCER RETURNS, THE CYCLE CONTINUES
Ten years after winning the first-ever Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, Souldancer returns with the definitive anniversary edition and an all-new companion novella, The Other Side of Fear.
The campaign funded in 3 hours and unlocked new art on day 1. Don’t miss your last chance to claim early bird rewards.