2026 is the Year of Reading; something we should celebrate and embrace. Most people, after all, have at least an inkling of an idea that reading is good for us, and that it is something we should encourage young people to do more of. Yet, it never hurts to stop every now and then and ask why we believe this. What exactly is it about reading that makes it such an incredibly important activity?
The obvious answer is that reading helps us learn. Of course, there’s all sorts of information we can glean from information books. But what about narrative stories? What do we learn from those? Many people would say that readers are learning about emotions and developing empathy with the characters we are reading about. The difference between this type of learning, compared to other mediums like film, documentaries, or even video games, is that reading requires more of us. Reading is much more active than most of these other activities as we are using less visual (and no audio) cues. Books strip away all the theatrics.
Of course, there may be illustrations in some of the books we encounter, but not always. Sometimes the reader is presented with just words on the page. And of course, the very best illustrations give us something extra than the words. A different view or perspective. So, when faced with words and, maybe, pictures on a page, a sort of alchemical magic happens. A reader is transported, just because of the work of their brain and their emotions, to places and lives far removed from their own.
Through reading, we get to actively walk inside the lives of others. And in a world that often seeks to divide us one from one another, reading gives us the chance to understand. To actively ask of ourselves: what we would do if faced with the choices and challenges the characters in our stories face? How would we respond to the decisions that have to be made?
I believe it is this active involvement that makes the reading of history books so important. There, in that moment of quiet, when faced with just words and pictures in a book, we can ask ourselves the question: ‘What would we have done? How would the period have impacted that decision?’. And in learning from the decisions made by others and our responses to the choices they made, we grow in our ability to make choices of our own. Our own critical thinking sharpens and strengthens. Hopefully, we won’t have to make the same crucial life and death decisions that the code-cracking team at Bletchley Park in World War Two made, which was the focus for my book Station X. However, through empathising with others who went before us, we can actively develop the mental agility needed to help us in the tricky situations that life may throw our way.
I would argue there are few greater gifts we can give our children.
It’s for this reason that writers have an obligation to make history books as interesting as they can possibly can for young readers. We need to show the large scope of events that have happened but also focus in on everyday ordinary people who were caught up in extraordinary situations. We need to make readers feel as if they were there, as if they were part of the action. The drive to make this involvement as active as possible is the reason that I decided to write Station X, so that the readers felt as though they had been transported back in time. I wanted to consciously lead them around Bletchley Park and show them the wartime decisions being made, to make the experience as vivid and as real as possible.
Reading is, after all, a conundrum. A child sitting in the book corner can look totally inactive. And yet, in that moment of their stillness as the pages turn, a child’s brain is performing magic. It is active. It is empathising. It is learning what it is to be human. And it is therefore our duty to give our children as much opportunity to do this as possible.
Reading is good for children. Reading is good for the world and history yet to be written. That’s got to be important. Not just in the National Year of Reading, but always.
Written by Helen Dennis
Helen Dennis is the author of ‘Station X’, which is available as part of the Read On programme. To find out more, head to Big Cat Read On – Collins