1 in 5 Kids Don't Have a Book at Home.

I am not at all suprised by these figures especially seeing as many children can not even get a hot cooked meal at home these days and some do not have a permanent home in the UK. As much as this is a serious issue I believe there are some problems which are higher on the pecking order at present.

Our son has to meny I say a estimate over 35

My youngest has got 15 she gets a new one every month my oldest has 7 because we donated all her other ones to her old school

This is crazy.Parents need to set an example though to trigger change.

So sad to hear this, Reading sets you up for a lifetime..You can visit sooooo many different places in your head as you read along..

Our daughter learnt to read fluently at 4, when she opened her Bank Account at 4.5 years her Da & I were asking her to find the words on on the posters in the Halifax, she had no problem finding the words Mortgage, Insurance etc much to people's astonishment !

Daughter absolutely LOVES her books, usually has 4 or 5 on the go at once.

NEVER been on Social Media apart from WhatsApp & Messenger keeping in touch with her family & friends, loves learning about the world, not bothered by Social Media..

When our daughter was small & it was a neighbour's son's birthday we bought him a nice book only to be asked by his Mum why we had bought him that as a present!

The mum was always on FB while her 2 children were wreaking havoc.the younger one turns 26 today & he was a bit of a tearaway growing up, hopefully that's changed...

This is really sad. I loved books when I was little. I got a lot of comfort from them was a way of escaping. Thankfully my grandma worked in a book shop so got me lots mostly Winnie the Pooh. I still have them. I went to the local library alot which was at the bottom of my street. Also got books from local church lots of art books which I found really interesting. I can't understand why kids don't have books.

My daughter has a big library of more than 100 books. She started reading by herself at 22 months of age. She is almost 5 now but keeps reading all day between activities like going to the potty, and having lunch/dinner

Fact. Would say its higher. Some kids only get only get a book when they start school take a reading book home and never bother to return them. You can tell the kids that never read or get read to at school. Some come to school and even in year 1 and 2 struggle to know how to use a book. What way you hold it, how to turn a page without riping it. What way you go. It's really sad.

Our son has roughly 50 books. We read to him at home and he reads to himself too. He reads books at nursery too. I loved reading when I was younger and his dad is a big reader. Lots of his books are 2nd hand. He loves going to the library.

We've always got loads out of the library, partly so I don't drive myself mad reading the same ones over and over at bedtime! My kids have also been given quite a few free books through the Bookstart scheme www.booktrust.org.uk/what-we-do/programmes-and-campaigns/bookstart/

That's really sad to hear, I always like to think kids are surrounded by books and a bedtime story is a must. There's always the library or freecycle event to pick books up from.

Our kids love books and we have always encouraged them to read, we take them to our local library regularly

We’ve got tons we are complete book bandits and I’m an author anyway lol

We have lots of books, mine are in their teens now so they are more into gadgets, however I also love reading. I have a shelf full of them, I do donate some from time to time.

Every child should have a book, it's sad that kids are missing out. Most schools have a library and encourage reading, my son's secondary school asks for book donations from time to time, then students can purchase books really cheap(20p) x

A world of wonder opens up when you transport yourself to other wonderful and magical places within the pages of each book you read. It is very disheartening to hear that some children don't possess even a single book

Incidentally, I posted a freebie for free books for under 5's earlier today :- www.latestdeals.co.uk/freebies/free-books-children-month-birth-age-five-imaginationlibrary

It kills me to hear this. It really does. Reading to your kids is without doubt one of the best things you can ever do for them

I think this is so so sad in this day and age when a child doesn’t have a book at home. I used to send my kids to bed an hour early on Sunday nites and it was to read, no tv, no music but read. They’d 6 other nites when they could play music r watch tv. My 6yr old granddaughter loves books and has an abundance of them. I keep telling her there’s boys and girls with no books and will she donate some to charity shops. The look she gives says it all, there’s no way she’ll part with a book so daughter has to sort through them when granddaughter isn’t bout. She loves her books and keeps them good so all are like new. Daughter donates them to local school r charity shops depending on what books she has. I love reading but all mine r now safely stored on my kindle cos I find books can sometimes be too heavy to read comfortably. My other daughter is a bookworm and I tried to get her into kindle. I bought her 1 and she stuck it out for wk before handing it back and saying it wasn’t same as book, she loves the smell of books, turning the pages etc and kindle didn’t do that. She’s 2 large bookcases full of books and each yr I take bout 6 large bags of books from her and donate them to local charity shops, local book stalls etc but no sooner have I taken those books than her shelves are full again. She’s a wide reader and will read almost anything, she always try’s to educate herself on something new from every book

My grandchildren have st least 40+ books at our house and always buy books for them to take home

Take this with a massive pinch of salt. The question asked of 5 to 8 year olds was "do you have any books of your own at home". For me personally as a child there were lots of different books at home, and certainly lots for my age group, but would I have answered yes to that question? Probably not, because at 5 the concept of those books belonging to me would of been a very tricky one. Some of the children aren't answering, no they don't have a book at home, they are answering no, I don't have any books at home that belong to me. The concept of ownership of those books at age 5, I'm not so sure. Take the below graph also from the same study: this shows that of the children who said yes, they had their own books at home, nearly 35% of those children said they had over 101 books. I honestly don't think that would be true, and shows that the children are answering in a way that may not be 100% correct.