Penwynn · Reading guides

Why reading still matters when AI can answer anything

An assistant can summarise a book in a sentence. It cannot give a child the thing reading builds by doing it.

Fewer children are reading for pleasure

The National Literacy Trust's 2025 survey of nearly 115,000 children and young people in the UK found that just 32.7% of 8- to 18-year-olds said they enjoyed reading in their free time — the lowest level in twenty years of asking.

Fewer than one in five (18.7%) said they read something daily in their free time, also the lowest level the Trust has recorded. That is UK data, but it describes a habit that competes with the same screens everywhere.

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Answers are cheap now. Attention is not.

This part is our view rather than a research finding. When a child can ask a machine for any answer, the answer stops being the scarce thing. What becomes scarce is the ability to stay with something long enough to understand it.

A story asks for exactly that. It asks a child to follow a thread across pages, to picture what the words do not show, to wonder what happens next and to wait to find out. A summary skips all of it, and those are the parts that build a reader.

Screens and young children's brains

A 2020 study in JAMA Pediatrics scanned 47 preschool-aged children. Higher use of screen-based media was associated with lower integrity of the brain's white matter tracts that support language, executive function and early literacy, and with lower scores on language and literacy measures.

Like most studies of this kind it was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that screens caused those differences. It sits alongside the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation to read with children from birth: not an argument against every screen, but for making sure the book is there too.

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AI can make things for children, so the reading has to be real

We should say plainly that Penwynn uses AI to write and illustrate its books. That is exactly why we think the reading around a book matters more than it used to: anything can be generated now, and what makes a book worth a child's time is that an adult chose it, read it and sat down to share it.

So nothing we make is printed until the person ordering it has read every word and seen every page. The book is a reason to read together, not a substitute for doing it.

Questions about this

Does reading still matter now that children can ask an AI anything?
Penwynn thinks it matters more. An AI can summarise a story in a sentence, but reading one asks a child to follow a thread, picture what is not shown and wait for an ending — the part a summary skips. Reading for pleasure is also falling: in 2025 only 32.7% of UK 8- to 18-year-olds told the National Literacy Trust they enjoyed reading in their free time, the lowest level in twenty years.
Is screen time bad for young children's brains?
The evidence shows associations, not proof. A 2020 study of 47 preschool-aged children in JAMA Pediatrics found that higher screen-based media use was associated with lower integrity of brain white matter tracts that support language and early literacy. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that screens caused the difference.
Are AI-written children's books a problem?
They can be when nobody reads them before a child does. Penwynn uses AI to write and illustrate its books, and nothing is printed until the person ordering it has read the whole story and seen every page, and can have any page changed.

A book they will ask you to read

Describe the people it is about, and we write and illustrate a picture book for them. It is free to make, and you read every word and see every page before you decide to print it.

Make a book

Also: Reading to young children and the developing brain →