Yahoo News Frank Cottrell-Boyce warns 'we risk losing a generation' as he's named Children's Laureate
Liverpool-based author Frank Cottrell-Boyce has pledged to tackle a national issue.
It comes as the 64-year-old, from Rainhill, was crowned the Waterstones Children’s Laureate from 2024 to 2026, having accepted the silver medal at a ceremony in Leeds.
The dad-of-seven launched his Laureateship with a speech declaring his ambitions for children’s books and the benefits of reading to be “taken seriously”, so as not to “lose a generation”. Frank said he will dedicate his two-year tenure to “igniting a fierce national conversation about the role books and reading can play in transforming children’s lives”.
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He said: “Our children are living through the aftermath of a series of crises, the pandemic, a series of wars and an unfolding environmental crisis. The only public conversation is about how we can make our children ‘catch up’ - which seems to me a kind of code for forgetting this ever happened.
“None of us has the slightest idea about what the future now holds for them – but the one thing we do know is that they will need to know how to be happy.
“I will use my time to call for a reset in our attitude towards how we value children’s books and reading – to start this story again – and to campaign for the millions of children living in poverty to be given the same life-changing chances. To stand up for the children in this country and their reading rights.
“So, whoever wins Thursday’s election has a huge responsibility. Whoever we wake up to Friday morning, they have the power to make a revolutionary change in children’s lives.”
Frank's children's fiction includes a sequel to Ian Fleming's children's classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Framed and The Astounding Broccoli Boy. The writer is also known for his work on the 2012 London Summer Olympics opening Ceremony.
However, for now, he is focusing on his campaign, called Reading Rights: Books Build a Brighter Future. It aims to bring about a national summit of expert voices in the political, education, literacy and early years sectors.
He added: “Writing and reading has transformed my life. I write children’s books because I think they help build the apparatus of happiness inside us.
“I’m privileged to be part of those intimate, crucial, person-forming moments when people share stories with the children in their lives. I’m privileged to visit schools up and down the country to read to children, and to see a Britain that is innovative, eccentric, funny, up for it, open-hearted.
“But I also get to see a different Britain. A Britain that is not fair. A Britain that’s a stranger to equality. For too long, the life-changing benefits of children’s reading have not been taken seriously. And now – as our children face an unknown future – we risk losing a generation unless we act.
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“So, my tenure will have happiness at its heart, but it will be about urgency. It will be about addressing invisible privilege and inequality.
"It will be about the increasing number of children in poverty being left further and further behind. It will be about calling for national provision so that every child – from their earliest years – has access to books, reading and the transformative ways in which they improve long-term life chances.
“It will be about campaigning for a visible sign that this country values its children – to show them they are important. That they are our only hope. So, I’m going to do everything in my power to get reading as a right for all into the national conversation.”
