There was an article in The Daily Telegraph written by Anita Singh on January 5, 2019 entitled “Adult Illiteracy is Ignored, Says Top Publisher”.

“Millions of British adults are functionally illiterate but the subject is ignored because it is not a ‘fashionable’ cause, according to the most powerful woman in publishing.

“Dame Gail Rebuck, chair of Penguin Random House, founded the Quick Reads scheme, which distributes specially-written books designed to encourage adults to discover the joy of reading.  Dame Gail devised Quick Reads after first founding World Book Day for children in 1997. She said: ‘At the time, and this seems like another age, people were worried about kids watching videos. They weren’t reading – this was pre-JK Rowling and there was a real sense that we were losing a generation.’

“The scheme began in 2005 and attracted some of the country’s best-selling authors, including Joanna Trollope, Adele Parks and Andy McNab. But this year it faced closure after failing to find a corporate sponsor and was only saved after Jojo Moyes, the writer, stepped in with £120,000 of her own money.

Jojo Moyes

Wikipedia says, “Jojo Moyes (born 4 August 1969) is an English journalist and, since 2002, a romance novelist and screenwriter.  Early in her writing career, Moyes wrote three manuscripts that were all initially rejected. With one child, another baby on the way, and a career as a journalist, Moyes committed to herself that if her fourth book was rejected, she would stop her efforts. After submitting the first three chapters of her fourth book to various publishers, six of them began a bidding war for the rights.  Moyes became a full-time novelist in 2002, when her first book Sheltering Rain was published.  Moyes’ publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, did not take up the novel Me Before You and Moyes sold it to Penguin. It sold six million copies, went to number one in nine countries, and reinvigorated her back catalogue resulting in three of her novels being on the New York Times bestseller list at the same time.”

“‘It’s a huge sum of money but not to a corporate sponsor, Dame Gail told the Telegraph. ‘But the point is, it’s not fashionable, is it? You can talk about little kids reading – we can all relate to that, we all want children to read books, it’s lovely.’

“‘But adults not reading? Or adults in the workplace not having enough literacy to fill in a form, to work on a computer, to be promoted? That’s not something that people like to talk about. But it exists.’

“The National Literacy Trust estimates that 5.1 million adults in England are functionally illiterate, meaning that they have a reading age of 11 or below and can understand only the most straightforward, short texts on familiar topics.

“Dame Rebuck said, ‘I was asked to give a World Book Day lecture and I mentioned that there are five million adults in the UK who are functionally illiterate. After giving the lecture, people came up to me and said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ I actually hadn’t thought of doing anything, but it suddenly occurred to me that if you have a household where there are no books, where the adults are either illiterate or so nervous about their literary capabilities that they don’t get engaged in their kids’ education or their homework, you have a cycle of deprivation that goes on through generations.’

“‘We got publishers involved and create a library of books to excite and engage emerging adult readers. We are very thankful to Jojo Moyes, who passionately believes in the power of reading to transform lives.’

“Moyes will fund Quick Reads for the next three years. She said when the donation was announced earlier this year:  ‘There’s a political side of me that feels dismayed that it’s down to an individual to keep a scheme that is basically for the public good going. In an ideal world it wouldn’t be me … but we are where we are.  We live in really difficult times and I felt sometimes you just have to put your money where your mouth is, and this is a cause I believe in.'”

Brava, Jojo!