Every time statistics appear showing how many people in this country are functionally illliterate, there's a moment of shock/horror in the press and after a while the caravan moves on. Millions of adults who can read the labels on cans and the headlines on some newspapers flounder when it comes to anything more complicated. A book is something they would never think of picking up.
That's a terrible thing to contemplate. Because it's not only books that are barred to those who can't decipher the words. It's also the internet, maps, advertisements, subtitles, magazines, everything, including blogs like this where everyone who visits takes their ability to read entirely for granted. They also take for granted their ability to write: letters to the editor, love letters, emails, comments in comments boxes and so forth. If you're illiterate, you're at a severe disadvantage in a modern society and the fact that our prisons are full of young people who've been failed in this respect by the educational system ought to make politicians put two and two together. Teach everyone to read fluently and at an early age and I reckon that crime figures would fall dramatically. Universal literacy ought to be a sine qua non of a civilised society, and an inalienable human right.
Everyone needs stories. Non-readers can get these on DVD, or at the movies or on TV. But getting your story fix in this way robs you of the unique pleasures of the book: the item you can carry with you, return to, make your own by imagining the setting, the characters and so forth. The writer of a book you love speaks, you feel, directly to you. This sensation is one every reader will recognize. The aim of the Quick Reads initiative is to provide short, easy-to-read books for those who feel, for whatever reason, unable to tackle a long and closely-printed text. The idea is: they will enjoy these stories so much and gain such confidence from having finished whole books, however short, that they will be able to go on to other things. Most importantly, these books are cheap (£1.99) and available in supermarkets and railway stations as well as bookshops. Non-readers don't often pop into Waterstone's.
When I read about the first batch of Quick Reads, I asked whether I could write one. In the past, I've written for a firm called Barrington Stoke, which does sterling work producing books for children and teenagers who have difficulties with reading. Now Lily: A ghost story will appear with seven other books to mark the 10th anniversary of World Book Day.
Quick Reads do not dumb down the content. Last year, Minette Walters' Chicken Feed was a really good crime novel, briefly and simply written. Lily is told in the first person voice of a 17-year-old girl, because I felt that a heroine like that would speak naturally and in a way that most people could understand. The story, I hope, is scary. I hope it will leave uncertainties in the minds of readers. And I hope they'll go on to stories they wouldn't have dared to dream about before they tackled a Quick Read. Orion publish it on the adult list but I wrote it to be suitable for teenagers as well. It was a challenge I enjoyed.
There is a Quick Read website. The BBC are also supporters. They have a RaW (Reading and Writing) website and I read the first chapter of Lily aloud for the site the other day. This will be live from March 1. Please spread the word about this imaginative scheme.
