If you write it, will they read it..? / 20 August 2026

I’ve been wondering lately whether tweens still read in the same eager, greedy way many of us like to imagine they do.

Not whether they can read, obviously. They are reading all the time — messages, captions, subtitles, menus, comments, game text, instructions, things on screens that vanish before you’ve properly looked at them. But reading a book for pleasure is a slightly different proposition. It asks for time, patience, and the willingness to enter one world while ignoring several others that are all blinking attractively nearby.

That is quite a lot to ask of someone who could, at any moment, be watching a video, playing a game, messaging a friend, or doing all three with the unnerving ease of modern youth.

So I don’t think the question is whether young readers still like stories. I think they do. The real question is how to make a book feel like a rewarding choice among all the other available entertainments.

My own feeling is that stories for this age group need an open door, not a lecture. They need energy, curiosity, a sense that something interesting is about to happen, and enough confidence to trust the reader without losing them in a swamp of explanation. If there’s humour, so much the better. If there’s mystery, even better. If there’s a world that feels as though it has rules worth learning, better still.

This is one reason I’ve always liked fantasy for middle-grade readers. Done well, it gives young readers both escape and structure: wonder, certainly, but also momentum. A problem to solve. A strange place to understand. A set of dangers that feel thrilling rather than dutiful.

In other words, a reason to keep going.

And perhaps that’s the real secret. Not persuading young readers that books are good for them, which is the quickest way to make anything sound medicinal, but reminding them that books can still be tremendous fun. Sometimes all a story has to do is open the right door at the right moment.