Please read to your kids

It's a pleasure to read to little ones. I used to have a book of bedtime stories when mine were young.

For my grandchildren, we used to have 'story cubes.' You threw three dice, each with an image on it, and then made up the story from there. I always included their names in the story and they loved it.

That was back in the day when I used to do bath time and hair drying. Now, aged 16 and 14, I somehow think they wouldn't appreciate that too much!

Sad to see that children don't read books so much now, there is so much pleasure to be had in the pages of a book. My children and grandchildren are all avid readers and my great grandson aged one already has his own collection of books. My grandson was not a reader when he was young until Harry Potter came along then there was no stopping him. Thank you JK Rowling.

I get the impression that literacy rates in America are some of the worst in the Western world. The UK is nowhere near as bad as that.

That said, it does seem as if kids just don't read at all. They may have the ability to read, but they just don't read books.

George Orwell's fear was that books would be banned in the future.

Aldous Huxley thought there was no need to worry about books being banned as people simply would not read.

And here we are.