Good News for Books: Children’s Reading for Pleasure Rises Again

After several discouraging years, there is finally reason to celebrate for anyone who loves books. New research from the National Literacy Trust, the UK charity dedicated to reading and writing, has found that children's enjoyment of reading is on the rise again — the first such increase since 2023, and a welcome turn in a metric that had long been heading in the wrong direction.

The findings come from an unusually large survey: 125,375 children and young people aged 5 to 18, drawn from 479 schools across the United Kingdom and questioned between January and March 2026. According to the results, more than one in three young people — 36.1% — said they enjoyed reading in their free time, up from 32.7% the year before. Daily reading also climbed, with one in five, or 20.3%, saying they read every day in their spare time, compared with 18.7% in 2025.

“New research from the National Literacy Trust, the UK charity dedicated to reading and writing, has found that children's enjoyment of reading is on the rise again — the first such increase since 2023, and a welcome turn in a metric that had long been heading in the wrong direction.”

The charity was careful to keep the good news in perspective. The increases, while real, are modest, and they were not felt equally across all groups: differences persist by age, gender and socio-economic background, and the numbers sit within a longer-term downward trend that a single positive year cannot erase. Still, after a run of declines, even a modest reversal is meaningful — a sign that renewed attention to reading in homes, schools and communities may be starting to pay off.

“To build on this momentum beyond 2026, we must continue to invest in what we know works — championing reading for enjoyment in our homes, schools and communities,” said Jonathan Douglas CBE, the trust's chief executive, pointing to the practical steps that help children discover books they love rather than simply reading because they must.

Reading for pleasure is one of the strongest predictors of a child's future wellbeing and success, shaping vocabulary, empathy and imagination in ways that ripple across a lifetime. That is why this small rise matters so much: it suggests that the tide can turn, that children can be drawn back to the quiet joy of a good story, and that the effort to put books in young hands — and to make reading feel like a pleasure rather than a chore — is worth continuing.