From Peepo! to The Bell Jar: 25 Books Before 25
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- National Literacy Trust survey of more than 100,000 UK young people aged 11-18 found only about a third actively enjoy reading, with daily free-time reading halved over two decades to less than one in five — the lowest figures on record.
- A 25-book reading list was curated one title for each year of life up to 25, framed by its compiler as a "buffet, not a regimen" and timed for the UK's National Year of Reading.
- The recommendations span picture books to adult literature, beginning with Janet and Allan Ahlberg's Peepo! for one-year-olds and Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon, moving through Julia Donaldson's The Gruffalo and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and reaching Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar by age 16.
- Author Julia Donaldson recommended Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad Together, calling Lobel "my hero among children's authors" for his "witty inventive ideas" and singling out the story The List as a favourite.
- Katherine Rundell championed Tove Jansson's Moominland Midwinter, arguing every child should read it "in order to be able to face, age eight, that we are both fundamentally alone in a harsh world and yet bound together by love".
- Frank Cottrell-Boyce argued Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole is "vastly more truthful and better written" than The Catcher in the Rye as the great novel of adolescent angst, "also sadder, funnier, and a more intimate voice".
- Picks foreground social and political themes alongside the classics, including Malorie Blackman's race-reversed Noughts and Crosses and Rafik Schami's A Hand Full of Stars, about a Syrian boy launching an underground newspaper in Damascus under government clampdown.
Why it matters: With only about a third of UK children still reading for pleasure and daily readers cut by more than half over 20 years, the list gives parents and teachers a curated, age-anchored entry point — endorsed by leading authors — designed to reignite enjoyment rather than enforce a curriculum, with titles ranging from Peepo! at age 1 to Plath at 16.
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