My youngest daughter just turned 11. And I still read her bedtime stories.

Yes, this is a sweet ritual we do. But the truth I’ve quietly wrestled with is more uncomfortable: she can’t read the books she loves without me.

Right now, we’re reading Katherine Rundell’s The Explorer — lush, layered, and demanding. Before that, Jasbinder Bilal’s Aarti and the Blue Gods — rich with mystery and emotional depth. Both brilliant; both squarely in middle grade territory. And my daughter is captivated, but only because I’m there mediating the story: explaining, pausing, connecting dots. She wouldn’t manage them alone. Not yet. Her reading stamina just isn’t there.

For a while, this made me sad (as a parent and as a writer). But then I really looked at her reading ecology — the ecosystem of her attention, her habits, her distractions — and reality sank in.

Reading is becoming harder.
Not because children are less intelligent or less imaginative, but because the modern world is designed to pull their attention in a hundred different directions. Screens offer instant stimulation. Boredom is avoidable. Narrative is bite-sized. Rewards are immediate. Reading, on the other hand, demands slowness, patience, and the willingness to sit with a story before it takes hold.
It’s a skill. A muscle. One that needs practice.

And right now, many children’s reading muscles are weaker than before. Attention slips away into TikTok currents and YouTube loops. Yes, stories come in many forms – but 30-second reels can’t teach complex language, plot memory, metaphor, emotional resonance, pacing, or texture. Books do that.

So here we are: a generation of children who love stories, but often struggle to read the ones they’re emotionally ready for.

Children’s writers sit right at this fault line. And it leaves us with a difficult question:
Do we adapt to shrinking attention spans, or resist them?

Here’s my (possibly controversial) answer: We adapt.
We write for the contemporary child. We trim, sharpen, tighten. We craft books that hook children quickly, build curiosity, build momentum; and gradually build reading stamina. Short chapters. Well-placed illustrations. Accessible text that doesn’t overwhelm.

Not because children are “less than”. But because the world is more than ever stacked against deep attention.

Our job (and my purpose in what I do), is to help children fall in love with story, to help them build the muscle that lets them later climb into more complex, demanding books.

Those books will always exist, and adults will always have a role in scaffolding them: reading aloud, making meaning together, guiding children up that ladder.

Reading is evolving. Today’s children are evolving. And children’s writers have to evolve with them.