UKLA is delighted to announce that the winner of the UKLA Academic Book Award 2025 is The Reading Lives of Teens: Research and Practice, edited by Chin Ee Loh and published by Routledge.
The fact that this book addresses issues concerning teen reading, such as digital reading, about which teachers are currently concerned, was welcomed, as was its emphasis on teens’ well-being. The judging panel also found it empowering that the chapters were firmly research-based. Many of them,understandably, draw on questionnaires (such as those on which the annual Programme for International Student Assessment is based), and interview techniques. It was refreshing to note, however, that the chapter entitled ‘Reading for Freedom, Reading for Love’, for example, also draws on ‘weekly ethnographic classroom observations, including recordings of students’ book club and partner discussions … [plus] over 250 students’ written responses to their texts’. The panel welcomed the book’s global reach, with chapters on reading in the United Arab Emirates and Japan as well as in several other countries across the world, although they felt that this aspect could, perhaps, have been addressed even further. Above all, however, the book appealed to panel members teaching across the whole age range despite its stated content being the reading lives of ‘teens’.
The UKLA Academic Book Award 2025 judging panel Highly Commends Balancing Act: An evidence-based approach to teaching phonics, reading and writing, by Dominic Wyse and Charlotte Hacking, published by Routledge.
This book also appealed to panel members working across both the primary and the secondary age-ranges. Its research inspired a range of reactions: some found the clarity of explanation refreshing and the integrated nature of the double helix model of reading and writing thought-provoking; others found the research chapters more challenging but nonetheless welcome. Overall, though, the book’s cultural variety and wealth of classroom material was greatly admired, with the quality of the picture-book reproductions in colour being singled out for particular praise. However, the panel also sensed that young readers’ own voices could have been even more prominently flagged up as evidence for some of the points being made. That said, it was felt that there was much for teachers and researchers to learn from this book and it was likely to be widely recommended.
UKLA would also like to thank the following authors and publishers of the other two books shortlisted for this award:
Literacy and Growth: A genealogy of English teaching by John Hodgson and Ann Harris, published by the National Association for the Teaching of English/Routledge
The Haunted Wood: A history of childhood reading by Sam Leith, published by Oneworld.
Chair of Panel: Gabrielle Cliff Hodges
Panel Members: Andrea Barlien, Sarah Brownsword, Susan Chapman, Theresa Gooda, Chris Lockwood, Penny Manford, Elizabeth Robertson, Rebecca Simpson-Hargreaves, Sara Stanley and Jo Tregenza.