Wendy Cooling: I want to get every child in the country reading for pleasure

When Wendy Cooling visited a children's home, something moving beneath a cloth-covered table intrigued her. "It was twitching underneath the cloth," she recalls. "I thought it was a dog." It was a terrified boy, barely a teenager, looking as guilty as a mouse caught stealing cheese. Why was he in hiding? He was reading a book: Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.

"'It's the only place I have to read,' he said to me. 'I love the magic.'" Her voice begins to crack as she recounts the story. " What sort of life he was having I didn't get to go into, but he begged, 'Don't tell anyone, will you?' It was his place, where he could escape."

The teenager sparked something in Cooling's mind. Because Wendy Cooling, author of children's books, editor of short story collections and relentless campaigner, has a track record for doing amazing things when she finds children starved of books. In this case the amazing thing is Booked Up, an ambitious plan, backed by The Book Trust and £2.78m of government cash, to get a free book into the hands of every 11-year-old child in England by this Christmas.

"If children can't read, they don't have that escape do they?" Cooling explains. "Reminding children when they start secondary school of the sheer pleasure they can have with a book they can take home to just read and not study is really important. I don't want children at that age just to be reading for work."

Chosen by a panel of experts led by Cooling - who was one of the first people, if not the first, to recommend Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - the 12 books are gateways into worlds Year Seven students can flee to forget SATs, bullying or teenage hormones. All tastes and reading levels are catered for with titles ranging from Sally Gardner's magical fairy adventure I, Coriander and Philip Reeve's fantastical sci-fi adventure Mortal Engines to Bali Rai's tale of a football-mad Asian boy (see extract below) and The Ring of Words poetry anthology edited by Roger McGough.

This is not the first time Cooling and the Book Trust have encouraged reading for pleasure among the young. Fifteen years ago in a primary school reception class another boy, four-year old Kevin, fumbled with a book in such a way that it was obvious he had not seen one before. "It was heartbreaking seeing him. Something had to be done," she explains. That "something" was Bookstart, a Book Trust scheme to put books into the hands of parents within the first year of their baby's life.

After struggling with funding, the government finally came on board in 2004. A massive cash injection from then Chancellor Gordon Brown took the scheme into the stratosphere, enabling it to reach not only new-born babies, but to provide free books to pre-school children between the ages of one and three and between three and four. As a result, Bookstart now reaches 2.1 million children a year and, according to research, its impact on the future development of Bookstart babies' lives is impressive.

According to a Roehampton University evaluation of the programme three years ago, reading to babies and young children regularly had a dramatic effect on their literacy development. But it is not just reading skills that are boosted by the scheme. It has also been shown to improve children's social and numeracy skills when they start school. With such research to support it, it is little wonder that the government was keen to fund the scheme.

Not that Cooling was expecting government investment on the scale Bookstart received. She was caught off guard when the support package was announced. "I almost crashed my car," she says laughing. "I was driving somewhere on the day of the Budget announcement and he announced that he was going to support Bookstart. You can't rewind your car radio, and I thought, did I really hear that?" But she did have two fans in Number 11 Downing Street. "Sarah Brown told me one day how her son John loves his Bookstart pack," she confides.

Bookstart has coincided with a golden age in children's fiction. The scheme can realistically claim to have helped eradicate illiteracy in the under 10s. "I know it is very popular to knock the government and I have hated them for all sorts of things too," Cooling admits. "But one thing they did improve is nursery education. I don't think that you would get a Kevin nowadays."

Bookstart was followed by Booktime, aimed at primary school children and backed by Pearson, which owns Penguin.

But teenagers have nagged at Cooling's conscience, not just because of the boy in the children's home. The relentless pressure of the crowded curriculum has left teachers under pressure to deliver results rather than lifetime readers. Books have become boring: work instruments, not pleasure domes.

"Starting secondary school is such a traumatic time for a lot of children," she observes. "I think what this project does is remind children that reading is also about enjoyment." There are other benefits too. "If you do have good reading skills you have so much more access to the whole curriculum. More than that, you have it as a support in your life whether you read for solace when something bad happens, or for information, or the sheer pleasure like we might get from reading a Jilly Cooper under a palm tree. It is a resource we can return to in different moods and times."

Her passion springs from her own childhood. Contrary to expectation, she did not grow up in a bookish household. Safe and secure though family life was, there was no money for books. Her father was the village baker, and she cannot remember seeing him with a book. Instead he would read the newspaper. "He taught me to read the Eastern Evening News sitting on his knee," she recalls. "But I don't know where my love for reading comes from, just that it was special. In fact, I was very naughty at school so was often sent to the library, where you were always sent at my school if you were naughty."

What saved her from associating books with punishment was a "brilliant" librarian. "She led me away from the horrors of what I was choosing for myself - Dennis Wheatley and stuff," she guffaws. Reading started journeys in the real world, not just her mind. "I loved the words, words like 'Babylon'," she enthuses, letting the name roll around on her tongue. "I thought, I have to go to Babylon. And I did go to Babylon - you couldn't go now. 'Euphrates'. What a wonderful word!" For a moment she is lost on a flight of words, exotic names enticing her to far off shores. "When I was a child my favourite book was The Story of Ping. It's not considered PC anymore, but I loved it and it took me to China the year Mao allowed visitors in. I kept thinking of Ping while I was there," she says with a flash of the naughty schoolgirl who liked to shock.

Bookstart has reached far-flung shores too. It recently launched in Taiwan, one of a host of countries whose children will benefit from the magical escape found in books. How does Cooling feel about her legacy? "I don't think of it that way at all," she says dismissively. "There are a lot of other people involved. It could not have happened without librarians or the people at Book Trust, who work their socks off." But without her determination to respond to the need of two boys to read, Bookstart, Booktime and now Booked Up would never have happened.

Dream On, by Bali Rai Barrington Stoke £4.99

"...I had my back to the goal, and a defender right up behind me. I faked a turn to my right ... and instead I went the other way. I was in space, with the goal 25 yards in front of me. I looked for a team mate to pass to. There were two. Something made me ignore them. I wanted to prove that the racist lad hadn't beaten me. I wanted to show him that I was 10 times the player he was. So I just hit the ball..."

Escape routes: Wendy Cooling's personal favourites

The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Raymond Briggs

Still in print after over 30 years. It's great to read aloud, good to join in with, and most important of all, it's fun!

Handa's Surprise by Eileen Brown

This African tale is told through the pictures more than the words. It's vibrant and it gives a taste of a very different land

The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo

Perfectly structured, this short novel takes readers on a journey through time as well as places. What's a butterfly lion? Read on!

The Boyhood of Burglar Bill by Allan Ahlberg

This is the story of Allen's own football-mad childhood in the 1950s, a memoir that's set to become a classic

Before I Die by Jenny Downham

This is a new book, the story of the last few months of a teenager's life. Sounds depressing but it's actually very uplifting

This Little Baby by Sandra Lousada

A tough board book packed with photos of babies, supported by a good rhyming text. Babies love looking at other babies!

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