"There is something for everybody. There is a book for everybody."
Laura Henry-Allain MBE
Reading enjoyment among children in this country is at a 20-year low. Only one in three children now say they enjoy reading in their free time. The share of parents who read with their child every day has fallen from two thirds to just over half in the space of six years. Those figures sit behind 2026 being declared the National Year of Reading — a national effort to reverse a decline that has been building for a long time.
One of the official ambassadors leading that push is Laura Henry-Allain MBE. She joined Babyzone CEO George Looker on the Best Beginnings podcast to talk about what it will actually take to turn those numbers around — and why the answer starts much earlier than most people think.
Laura brings more than 35 years of experience across education, health and social services to this conversation. She is an award-winning early education specialist, producer, author and keynote speaker. She is vice president of the British Association for Early Childhood Education, a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and one of only 49 educators worldwide named as a Global Master Leader in early care and education. She was awarded her MBE in 2021 for services to education.
She is perhaps best known as the creator of Jojo and Gran Gran, the first Black British animation produced for CBeebies. The show came from something deeply personal. Laura's middle name is Josephine. Her grandmother died at 101, and in her grief Laura began writing down the stories her grandmother had shared with her. A little girl and her grandmother. Jojo and Gran Gran.
The BBC said no a couple of times. A producer in development, Rosa Tilly, pitched it again and again. They finally got a yes. The show went live a week before lockdown — and became a phenomenon.
"I always reflect," Laura says in this episode. "Was it popular because we got into lockdown and people were missing their families? It's to the heart. Every child has a grandparent, or if not a grandparent, an adult that's significant in their life."
More than five years on, the show still has a new fan base coming through. Laura believes it will be one of those evergreen shows that passes from generation to generation.
The statistics Laura opens with are not abstract. They describe a shift in the relationship between children and books that is happening across income levels, across settings and across age groups. The National Year of Reading exists because that shift has been significant enough to require a coordinated national response.
Laura's role as an ambassador is not ceremonial. She is in nurseries and schools, delivering author visits, sharing resources and making the practical case to parents and practitioners that the barriers to reading are lower than people think.
Her number one piece of advice for families is to visit a library. She is clear-eyed about the obstacles — library closures, the cost of getting there for families on low incomes, the time pressure on working parents. She works through those obstacles one by one, because she has seen what happens when children find books that speak to them.
She also knows what it feels like from the inside. Laura is severely dyslexic. Her handwriting, her spelling, her grammar — all affected. And yet she has loved reading since childhood, because the aspect of her dyslexia that touches those things never touched her love of stories. She says this plainly, without drama, and it lands.
One of the most important things Laura addresses in this episode is the question of parental confidence. It is not just access that keeps families from reading together. It is the fear of doing it wrong.
"One of the things I always hear from parents is they don't feel confident in reading a book," she says. "Nobody is going to judge you. For some parents it could just be looking at pictures with their child — because it is their child seeing the print in that book."
This matters. The evidence on shared reading in early years is unambiguous about its developmental value. But that evidence is only useful if parents feel able to act on it. Laura's message removes the performance pressure entirely. You do not need to be a fluent reader. You do not need to read a full book. You need to sit with your child and a book and let them see that print is something worth looking at.
She describes a bag-to-go approach — a tote bag kept by the door, filled with books, paper and mark-making pens, ready for buses, waiting rooms and mealtimes. Small, practical and entirely achievable.
The creation of Jojo and Gran Gran was not just a personal achievement. It was, at the time, a first. The first Black British animation produced for CBeebies. Laura did not know that when she made it. When she found out, she hoped it would open a door for others. That door has been slower to open than she would have liked.
Diversity in children's books and on screen, she argues, benefits every child. It builds cultural capital, develops curiosity and helps children understand that they are part of something larger than their immediate experience.
Laura's book Daddio and Co centres on a household where the mother works full-time and the father does the bulk of the caring — a reflection of lived experience, and a deliberate choice to show a Black father in a positive, tender light.
She talks in this episode about why it matters to capture that shift in children's literature — to put on nursery walls and in book corners the full range of people who might do the school run, sit on the floor at story time or carry a child to bed. Children notice what they see. They notice what they don't see too.
The episode ends with a quickfire round, and Laura's answer to the final question stays with you.
What do children understand that most adults have lost?
Joy.
"You should be joyful in everything," she says. "It comes back to being childlike."
It is a simple answer from someone who has spent 35 years thinking rigorously about what children need. The books, the libraries, the resources, the policy, all of it is in service of something that children, if we give them the conditions for it, already know how to do.
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