THE national literacy hour has taken the joy out of reading for millions of pupils, while writing tasks set in national tests are stifling children’s creative writing, Jacqueline Wilson, the Children’s Laureate, said yesterday.

The award-winning author called for more “old-fashioned reading aloud” to children — even in secondary school. She added that children should be encouraged to read entire books rather than analyse only short extracts.

Wilson, who has sold more than 20 million books and is the most borrowed author from public libraries, said that she and fellow children’s writers despaired of the way in which short passages from their books were used in a highly prescriptive and pedestrian way in schools to study grammar or genre.

“I had one teacher say to me, ‘I find your Tracy Beaker books useful in the classroom. We read a page and then I get the children to write it properly’. This teacher had no concept that Tracy Beaker is written in the first person in the voice of a ten-year-old girl and that the book is trying to echo a child’s voice and trying to get children to enjoy it.”

She said that it was a shame that children were not given free rein to read and enjoy entire books for pleasure.

“The saddest thing of all is that some teaching today seems to have forgotten that the whole point of reading any book is that it gives us pleasure or it helps us understand about new situations,” she said.

“We do want children to be able to spell and punctuate properly. But if a child has experienced many books, it is not necessary to teach them about adverbs and adjectives — they will pick up that these are things that make sentences more interesting.”

Wilson also criticised modern teaching methods that encourage children to spend time writing out a lengthy plan before writing a story.

“I’m not against a child spending a few minutes thinking about what they are going to say in advance, but I do not think they should have to plan it all out beforehand. Few professional writers do it,” she said.

“It’s very difficult to get children enthusiastic about writing when they have to plan it all out and then rewrite it all. It takes the fun out of it.”

As the Children’s Laureate, Wilson is a roving ambassador for books. The post is awarded every two years to a British writer or illustrator of outstanding achievement.

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