Children in the UK are not reading enough at home, favouring television and computer games instead, according to new research. The survey conducted earlier this month by Nesfl6 Box Tops for Books, which asked parents about their children's reading habits, found that half of UK children spend less than two hours reading per week. A further one in 10 had not read a book in the past month, and of those who do read regularly, one in four avoid non-fiction titles. More than half of the parents surveyed believed their children should read more non-fiction books. 'It is essential that young children read at least one book a week and, in particular, educational books,' said family counsellor Jenni Trent Hughes. But others believe such a stern approach to reading may not help children. 'We can turn children off it by simply saying it's something they must be doing,' said Amelia Foster, who runs Reading Connects for the National Literacy Trust, an organisation that encourages reading for pleasure to enhance classroom achievement. Ms Foster said the survey results might not give children enough credit. Previous studies have found that 75% of 11 to 18-year-olds enjoyed reading, and 83% read in their spare time. Past reading surveys have found distinct differences in the reading habits of boys and girls. Girls tend to be more enthusiastic about reading in general, but particularly fiction (perhaps helping to explain why Jaequeline Wilson, author of Sleepovers and Bad Girls, is the most borrowed author from public libraries), while boys are drawn to books about a place, subject, or hobby that interests them. Nicola Davies, author of Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable, said while working with underachieving boys she found they responded to non-fiction better than fiction. 'You can get them to write poetry but they won' t read it,' she said. Ms Davies would like to see children's non-fiction take off in the way adult non-fiction has in recent years, thanks largely to rifles like Longitude that employ strong narratives. This may encourage boys to read more, she said. 'There's a lot of really crap non-fiction out there. It's absolute' paint by numbers, pile them high, and sell them cheap'. But it's not really addressing the issue. Non-fiction as it is cutting off a whole route into reading, especially for boys,' added Ms Davies. But the consequences of these trends may run deeper. Some worry that steering clear of non-fiction may effect the development of a child's imagination, even going so far as to impact their future career choices. Nicola Jones credits her choice of studying zoology at university to her childhood Encyclopedia Britannica. 'There was this fantastic bit in the back on transparencies of human bodies, and it absolutely fired my imagination about the workings of the human body. Children's imagination needs all sorts of fuel. And that's what's going to drive them, give them intrinsic motivation. It's what makes your intellectual cars go.' For this reason Ms Jones is planning a conference next year that will address how non-fiction can be transformed into something more children will want to read. Which of the following belongs to non-fiction?