WHEN I was a child, I could usually be found in the school library or in any quiet corner with my nose in a book. Picture books were followed by fairy and folk tales, and finally the bliss of novels that could transport you into different worlds.

I wanted to pass this gift onto my son and read to him and with him from an early age, taking great joy when he loved the children’s classics I’d grown up with: The Secret Seven, Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, The Narnia Chronicles, The Hobbit and, our favourite, Watership Down.

But one year it all stopped, and he no longer wanted me to read to him. Fair enough, I thought, he’s too big for that now, and expected him to read on his own – only he didn’t, despite living in a house crammed with books, good local and school libraries, and books and book tokens for presents.

Like many people my age, I despaired of his generation’s fascination with smart phones, tablets and computer games, assuming I’d lost my son to digital, virtual worlds far more enticing than any dreamt up by C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien.

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And, as an author, I feared that the habit of reading for pleasure would be lost in favour of alternatives that are less demanding but more instantly gratifying.

So, I was surprised and gratified by the latest findings that show children turned to reading during lockdowns and school closures. When freed from the constraints of classes, homework and clubs, they had acres of time to read.

Children found they read longer books of greater difficulty during lockdown periods and reported that reading made them feel better while isolated from the wider world, according to this year’s What Kids are Reading report from Renaissance Learning, which studies the reading habits of more than one million children in the UK and Ireland.

While the year before the pandemic showed a dispiriting 17 per cent drop in the number of books read compared to the previous year, there was a marked upturn from July 2020.

What’s more, the books read during lockdowns were more challenging, with primary school children and those in year seven reading more demanding texts in particular.

“During the lockdown overall, pupils were tending to read longer books of greater difficulty and with greater comprehension,” said the report’s author, University of Dundee professor Keith Topping. “Having more time to read gave children the chance to immerse themselves in literature.”

Another new study by the National Literacy Trust quizzed 58,000 children aged nine to 18 about their reading habits. The NLT found that 47.8 per cent of children said they enjoyed reading at the beginning of 2020, but in a second survey of 4,000 children in May and June, during the spring lockdown, 55.9 per cent said they enjoyed reading either very much or quite a lot.

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“In 2020, we recorded the lowest percentage of self-reported reading enjoyment since 2005, when we began asking the question in our surveys,” wrote the NLT’s Dr Christina Clark and Irene Picton.

“However, shortly after this survey closed came the first wave of school closures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and our subsequent survey began to tell a different story: one of increased reading engagement during this first spring lockdown.”

According to the NLT’s survey, three in five children said reading made them feel better during lockdown, while 32 per cent said reading helped them when they felt sad about not being able to see friends or family.

“Having more time to read and the increased autonomy of book choice, along with the opportunity to read for its own sake were key reasons why more young people are enjoying being immersed in stories,” said Clark.

With Book Week Scotland coming up in the third week of November, this was cheering news for a confirmed bookworm like me. I’d given up encouraging my son to read a few years ago, but now he’s 15, I thought I’d broach the subject again. What he told me was illuminating.

It turns out that he does read, although not in the same way I did at his age. He reads non-fiction – currently a book about the immune system – and listens to novels on Audible with John Steinbeck and George Orwell as favourites.

I assumed that he was listening to music on the headphones surgically attached to his ears, but instead he’s listening to podcasts about political movements and modern history.

What about reading for pleasure – fiction? That’s not his idea of relaxation as it requires too much concentration when he just wants to relax. If he wants to give his brain a break, he’ll look at TikTok, not pick up a novel.

Podcasts and Audible, after all, are just another way of telling stories, and it’s often said that males prefer non-fiction to fiction.

Still, I’m nostalgic for the days when we followed the children through the wardrobe into Narnia, thrilled at Bilbo Baggins’ encounter with Gollum, and felt for Hazel and his brave companions on their quest for a new home on Watership Down.

Perhaps he’ll come back to reading for pleasure one day when he picks up the copy of The Catcher in the Rye that I thought he’d love. And maybe one day he’ll introduce me to the books he has discovered. I can only hope so.

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