How do you get your kids to read? Maybe that’s the wrong question. It should be: have you read a good book lately?

If your child sees a TV screen reflected in your glasses more often than he sees you curled up in a corner absorbed in a book, then the hard question you have to ask yourself is: who is to blame if he displays little interest in reading for pleasure? And if you don’t read at least some of what your children read, how can you discuss books with them — and how can you expect them to read the books you recommend? I know that Hannah Montana’s Pony-riding Holiday is going to be painful, but mothers, so was childbirth.

Sometimes you get lucky. My son, Finbar, recommended Holes by Louis Sachar (available for 75 Books for Schools tokens). It’s now one of my favourite books.

Being read to aloud is one of life’s great joys. I wooed my future wife by reading to her on a road trip. So why is it that so many parents give up on bedtime stories at such a young age? Bedtime reading for me became more fun the older Finbar became. At 10 we were both gripped by the great adventure, fantasy and science fiction stories of my own American youth: The Call of the Wild by Jack London, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny.

When I was writing Shadowmagic, my own fantasy adventure novel, I read my day’s prose to the then 12-year-old Finbar in bed with a camping lamp on my head and a red pen in my hand to note his reactions. Knowing that he was waiting for his next instalment made it easier for me to sit down at the keyboard each day.

You will hear lots of talk about the internet, computer games and reality TV creating a generation of illiterates with no time for the pleasures of a good book, but these claims were the same about: nickelodeons, the talkies, radio and television ever since it was invented. They will be repeated when holographic feelies become the next big thing. There have always been stimuli cutting into children’s reading time and there always will be. The secret is to make sure your child learns the joy of reading not through words but through example.

Am I a perfect parent? Yeah, right. Does my boy read as much as I would like? No. But just the other day , without prompting, he pulled one of my favourite novels off the shelf — Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

“Is this any good?” he asked.

“Oh yeah!” I said and he took it into his room. It was a quietly joyful moment for this parent.

John Lenahan is a comedian and magician.

Shadowmagic is published by HarperCollins

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