Jacqueline Wilson, 59, the award-winning children’s novelist whose books tackle topics such as domestic violence, called on parents and teachers to promote the “joy” of reading aloud to children.

“Reading aloud makes a child a reader, before they can read for themselves,” she said. “In everybody’s terribly busy lives, little children don’t always get read to.

“In schools, I know the national curriculum is absolutely crammed full, and kids have hardly any time, but 15 minutes a day should be set aside for story time — a way of relaxing children, stimulating them with the sheer joy of telling stories.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, in state primaries, it was just a matter of course. That seems to have slipped by the wayside.”

The Children’s Laureate is a roving ambassador for books, a post awarded every two years to a British writer or illustrator to celebrate outstanding achievement in his or her field.

Ted Hughes, the late Poet Laureate, lobbied the Government for the initiative and was patron of the award until his death in 1998. Quentin Blake, the illustrator, was the first to hold the post, in 1999. He was followed by Anne Fine, the author whose Madame Doubtfire inspired the Robin Williams film Mrs Doubtfire, and Michael Morpurgo, the author, who told The Times last year that primary school teachers were failing pupils by using literacy hours to do marking rather than encourage reading.

Wilson said yesterday that her father, a civil servant, used to read to her as a child — everything from Enid Blyton to Dickens — and she found it inspirational.

Nowadays, she said, reading has suffered because children have televisions and computers in their bedrooms.

“I’m not anti-TV or computers,” she said. “There is a time for them too, but a human being reading aloud to a child is about sharing, eye contact, repeating a sentence if it makes a child laugh a lot, skipping a few pages if an author is being a bit boring. It’s about getting close to one another.”

The selection panel for the Children’s Laureate represents all aspects of the children’s book world. This year it included Professor Kim Reynolds, of Newcastle University, and James Kerr, of the Centre for Children’s Books, in Newcastle.

A CHILDREN'S FAVOURITE

• Jacqueline Wilson has become a publishing sensation. She has written more than 80 books, which have sold 20 million copies
  
  
• Figures published in February showed that she was the most popular author in libraries for the second successive year
  
  
• She was the only author to have exceeded two million library loans. Jane Austen and Shakespeare paled against her total, each barely clocking up 100,000 loans and failing to make the top 125
  
  
• Many of her books have been adapted for the stage, including Double Act, Midnight and Bad Girls, while Girls in Love is a major children’s drama series on ITV
  
  
• The Story of Tracy Beaker is CBBC’s top-rated children’s drama, currently in its fourth series

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