We might not always be here, but our words remain long after. So, if we want to nurture the next generation of readers, what can we do to make sure a love of literature sticks?
Reading opens the door to learning and key language skills, helping children develop their speech, vocabulary and understanding of the world around them. Luckily, it does not take much to spark a child's interest. Spending just ten to fifteen minutes a day with a book can be enough to begin encouraging that curiosity.
Reading to a child from the very start of their life is one of the best ways to begin. Babies learn language by hearing adults speak and repeat words, gradually giving meaning to the shapes, colours, letters and pictures they see across the page. Trying different voices, accents and sounds can keep a child engaged while making story time more entertaining for both of you.
Children can learn to love books before they learn how to read them, and those early positive experiences can establish an association between books, companionship and enjoyment.
But what if that beginning never happened?
It Is Never Too Late to Become a Reader
Although we often talk about encouraging "the next generation", literacy is not exclusively a children's issue. There is no age by which somebody is supposed to have discovered a love of books, nor should anyone be embarrassed because reading or writing is difficult for them.
Millions of adults in the UK have difficulties with literacy. For some, straightforward and familiar texts may be manageable while longer texts or unfamiliar subjects present significant challenges. Others may have reached adulthood without ever developing confidence in their own reading ability.
Someone learning to read confidently at 50, 60 or beyond deserves exactly the same encouragement as a child sounding out their first sentence. Becoming a reader is an achievement whenever it happens.
The same applies to people who can read perfectly well but simply haven't picked up a book for decades. Perhaps school made reading feel like homework. Perhaps the books they were given never interested them. Perhaps work and family life simply got in the way.
The solution need not be to immediately tackle Dickens or Shakespeare. It might be a short story, newspaper article, biography of a favourite musician, football magazine, graphic novel, audiobook or a book about gardening. The important thing is finding the doorway that works for the individual.
Make Reading a Pleasure, Not a Test
One principle appears repeatedly in advice about encouraging young readers: give them some choice.
If a child loves dinosaurs, find books about dinosaurs. If they prefer comics, let them read comics. They are still reading. As confidence and curiosity develop, other subjects and forms of writing can follow naturally.
The same courtesy should be extended to adults.
There is little value in telling somebody that the things they enjoy reading somehow "don't count". Crime novels count. Romance counts. Sports journalism counts. Fan fiction counts. Magazines count. E-books count. Listening to an audiobook can even become a route towards picking up the printed version later.
Interest is often the bridge to literacy.
This is especially important at a time when children's reading for pleasure has become a concern. Simply insisting that young people "read more" is unlikely to be enough. We need to give them a reason to want to.
Dolly Parton and a Library Built to Outlive Her
Following her death in August 2026, the world has understandably remembered the extraordinary songwriter, singer and entertainer. Yet one of the achievements of which Parton herself was most proud had nothing to do with records or concert stages. To millions of children, she became known simply as "the book lady."
Parton founded her Imagination Library in 1995, inspired in particular by her father, who could neither read nor write. Beginning in her home county in Tennessee, the idea was wonderfully straightforward: children enrolled in the programme would receive their own carefully selected book through the post every month, from birth until the age of five, at no cost to their family.
Crucially, the book belongs to the child. It arrives addressed to them personally. Month after month, books cease to be something belonging only to schools and libraries and instead become familiar possessions waiting at home to be opened again.
What began as a local project became an international literacy movement. The Imagination Library expanded to the UK in 2007 and now operates across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Republic of Ireland. By the time of Parton's death, more than 330 million books had been placed into children's hands.
The scale is impressive, but the principle behind it is perhaps even more important: put books where people can reach them.
A child cannot discover a favourite book if there are no books in the house. A hesitant adult cannot easily become a reader if books feel inaccessible, expensive or intimidating. Creating readers therefore requires more than telling people that reading is important. It requires giving them opportunities to discover why it is enjoyable.
And Parton's work is not finished simply because she is gone. The Imagination Library was deliberately built around partnerships with local communities, organisations, businesses and individuals so that its work could continue and expand. Its example is an invitation to the rest of us. We may not be able to send millions of books around the world, but we can support literacy programmes, libraries, book-gifting schemes and community projects that put the written word into someone's hands.
Sometimes creating a new reader can begin with something as simple as giving away a book.
Let Them See You Reading
One of the easiest ways to encourage reading requires no teaching at all: simply be seen enjoying it.
Children take cues from the adults around them. If books are treated as entertainment rather than an obligation, reading becomes part of ordinary life. That might mean reading alongside a grandchild for fifteen minutes, swapping books with a friend, visiting the library together, or simply talking enthusiastically about something you've just read.
And don't underestimate the library. A library card offers something particularly valuable to a hesitant reader: permission to experiment. You can try mysteries one week, history the next and science fiction after that without having to purchase a shelf full of books. Many libraries also offer reading groups, activities and events, adding a social element for people who might otherwise think of reading as a solitary pastime.
We can support those institutions, too. Donate books where they are wanted. Volunteer with literacy organisations. Support community libraries and reading groups. Help somebody apply for a library card. Find out whether programmes such as the Imagination Library operate in your area. If they do, tell families about them; if they don't, consider supporting efforts to bring similar schemes into the community.
Not everyone can found an international literacy charity. Everyone can help make reading a little easier for somebody else.
From Reading to Writing
There is another way to keep the written word alive: encourage people to create it themselves.
A child inventing a silly story, a teenager writing about their favourite characters, a parent keeping a journal, or a grandparent recording memories of childhood are all participating in the same tradition.
Writing does not have to begin with the ambition of producing a novel. A few sentences about something that happened today are enough. So is a letter, poem, family recipe, online post or memory from years gone by.
For older generations in particular, writing can become a wonderful bridge between ages. What was your first job like? What did your town look like fifty years ago? What family stories were told to you as a child? What do you remember that younger relatives have never experienced?
Write it down.
Those words may someday become somebody else's doorway into reading.
Keeping the Story Going
Perhaps the greatest mistake we can make when promoting literacy is presenting reading as medicine: something people ought to do because it is good for them.
Books can certainly educate us, expand our vocabulary and introduce us to experiences beyond our own. But before any of that, a story can simply make us laugh. A mystery can keep us guessing. A biography can introduce us to an extraordinary life. A poem can put into words something we have felt for years but never knew how to express.
That enjoyment is what we should pass on.
Start with a newborn and a picture book if you can. Read with your children and grandchildren. Give teenagers the freedom to find their own interests. Encourage the adult who struggles with reading rather than making them ashamed of it. Invite the person who hasn't opened a novel in thirty years to try again. Support the organisations putting books into homes and helping people learn. And if you are that hesitant reader yourself, start wherever you please.
Dolly Parton understood that her own lifetime was finite, but the possibilities created by a book were not. The programme she leaves behind is proof that a love of the written word can pass from one person to another, one family to another, and eventually one generation to another.
There is no wrong age to read your first book, discover your favourite author, or write your first story.
We preserve the written word not simply by keeping old books on shelves, but by continually creating new people who want to open them - and perhaps, one day, write something of their own.