All the books you've never read

Nope - reading novels, is what I said. It's not really the same as reading newspapers. What you want kids to get from reading at a young age is the pure joy of being immersed in a story, a narrative. The 'quality' of a story, for kids, anyway, is in many ways determined purely by how enjoyable it is. Reading for pleasure, as a child, interestingly, is apparently the single biggest indicator of social mobility. I read that in the Guardian ;-)

Certainly I trace my rise through the social ranks back to the hours I spent as a child reading for pleasure.
And what of those who only read fiction and never or rarely dirty their hands with, say, current affairs, politics, science or journalism? To know all the works of Trollope but never to have experienced Martha Gellhorn?
The reason I read books as a child was that I had a mother who read a lot, recognised the same liking in me and took me to the local library every fortnight with our dog-eared cards to restock. It would be hard to say what my mother would have been like had she not read but evidence of the civilising influence of literature was not written all over her face or the back of her hand. Nor did it lend a rosy hue to her angry tirades and insane dictats or moderate her arbitrary cruelty. And she didn't just like popular fiction either; it wasn't down to the wrong books.
Probably the significant part of that story is that we went to a *local library; free, reasonably well stocked and open to all.* It will be all well and good a child nowadays developing a love of books having read Harry Potter if their parents cannot afford to buy any and their local library has closed down.