Get Reading: Children’s laureate says fiction is the daddy for young readers

Too many fathers believe their children should read factual books instead of fiction, says children’s laureate Malorie Blackman.

She said her own father thought reading stories was a “waste of time” so she had to join her local library to get books there instead.

Speaking after she appeared at the Standard’s Get Reading festival in Trafalgar Square, Blackman, 51, said: “My dad thought fiction was

a waste of time. That’s why from the age of seven or eight I lived in my local library. My dad was so wrong. I got my emotional intelligence from books.”

She went on to write 60 teenager and children’s books including the best-selling Noughts and Crosses series, with her first book published when she was 28. But her father died before she became an author.

At the festival, organised by the Standard and NOOK, she urged parents to take children to libraries. And she wants every primary pupil to be given a library card.