A 2013 UCL study found that reading for pleasure was more important for children’s cognitive development than their parents’ level of education, while a 2011 University of Oxford study linked reading for pleasure with improving pupils’ job prospects. The National Literacy Trust’s latest report on non-fiction reading (2022) highlighted the important role of literacy and non-fiction reading in helping children and young people engage with their interests and with the world around them; and interestingly, unlike with the reading of fiction, non-fiction reading is popular regardless of gender and socio-economic background. Another benefit of reading is to increase empathy, and when students are reading non-fiction that means increasing their empathy for real people in real situations.