Are Teens Reading Enough ? By Amy Fitzpatrick

Are Teenagers Reading enough books?

Are teens in the UK reading books enough these days? 19% of 15 year olds think that reading books is a waste of time and 29% 15 year olds hardly ever read. 35% only reading because they have to. Most teenagers like watching TV and playing video games rather than picking up a book and reading it, even though reading books can improve your English and help with spelling, punctuation, vocabulary. Through reading books you can also have a laugh, use your brains, get some free advice, escape noise and tension and boredom, and it can also make you discover new interests. Other things that teens do which puts them off books is judge it by its cover , because it looks boring, or looks really nice and it might be really rubbish, which would put you off books.

As well as teenagers not reading books, libraries are facing crisis as less and less people are borrowing books from library’s and just going to library’s to borrow CD, DVD’s, video’s and use the internet. The amount of people borrowing books has gone down by a third in the last 9 years. Some teenagers like reading books that they can relate to or about people the same age as them and it can help them to sort out problem of their own by reading what the characters are going through in the stories. Books by Jacqueline Wilson, Melvin Burgess are good if you want to be able to relate to them and are written in the 1st person so you can get to know what the character thinks and feels. Young people like reading books from authors like JRR Tolkien, JK Rowling, and Jacqueline Wilson.

Some of the top books for teenagers nominated by teenagers are: The Lord of the Rings - JJK Tolkien voted the UK’s best book), Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen and Harry Potter and The Goblet of fire – J.K Rowling. Allot of people aged 12 – 15 like reading scary books such as Goosebumps and Adventure / Fantasy books by authors like J.K Rowling, J.J.K Tolkien, Jacqueline Wilson and Roald Dahl. I did a survey to find out what type of books people aged 12 – 14 liked and did a table, I also found out that some of there favourite authors were: Louise Rannisson, Jacqueline Wilson, J.K. Rowling, Marian Keyes, Constance Briscoe And Sue Mayfield




Genres Results

adventure 1
horror 3
biographical 3
romantic 3
fantasy 1
historical 1



Personally I think that teens and young children should be encouraged more to read books by the families, and at school to help boost there education. I also think that they should try reading different types of books until they find types of books that suite them and they love.