SIR - As a means to promote childhood literacy, here's a topical idea.

If everyone buying Christmas gifts for pre-teens were only to buy gifts which predominantly feature text in some form or other, books being the most obvious choice, then we may kick-start an indirect move back to reading for pleasure.

Thus we may all become involved in reversing a generation of ineffective teaching and indifferent parenting, empowering the young with an articulate fluency in this most amazing and versatile of languages, from which they, and we too, will all benefit for their whole lives.

Worth a try?

Graham Hoyle, Kirkbourne Grove, Baildon