When a child says they hate reading

• The book is too hard

  A child reading a book a year above them is doing arithmetic, not reading. It does not show from outside, because they can manage a page if somebody is watching. The test is whether they read it when nobody is.

  This is the one we are actually built for: the next book is written at the level they are reading now, not the level of the books on the shelf.

• The book is boring to them

  Most children's books are about a handful of things. A child who cares about none of them has been told to read for years and offered nothing they wanted. That is not a reading problem.

  A story here is about what they chose, from a menu rather than a blank box, and it changes as what they choose changes.

• Reading has become a thing they are marked on

  Levels, charts, a book bag with a number on it. A child who has worked out that reading is graded has learned something true and unhelpful, and enthusiasm does not undo it.

  There is no score on a child's screen here, no streak, and nothing they can lose by not reading for a week. What is measured is shown to a grown-up.

• They would rather be doing something else

  Sometimes that is the whole of it. Reading aloud to a child who can read perfectly well is not a step backwards; it is most of what makes readers.

  Books here can be read aloud by the product, or recorded by a grown-up in their own voice. Neither counts for less than reading it themselves.

What we are not saying

That any of this is a diagnosis. A child who is finding reading far harder than the children around them, over a long stretch, is worth talking to their school or a specialist about, and a story written at their level is not a substitute for that conversation.

And that this will make a child love reading. It will not, on its own. What it can do is remove the two reasons that are about the book rather than about the child, which leaves the other two where they belong, which is with you.