PARENTS, as children know, are never happy. Take reading. First, we worry if they don't read. Finally they start to read by themselves and drive you demented with pleas for Babysitters Little Sister or Sweet Valley Twins or Point Horror books and you worry because they're reading "rubbish".

If the problem is a child who reads the shlock you hate, the Point Valley Babysitter Mills and Boons for kids... Expert A says just let them get on with it, they'll get the reading habit. Then you meet a mother who says "oh yes, mine were addicted to those too but I made sure to steer them in the direction of good literature".

You crumple guiltily in the face of such successful parent upmanship and start badgering your own kids to read books that, let's be honest, you never read yourself. (You were too busy reading every Famous Five, Secret Seven, Five Founder Outers and adventure book that Enid Blyton ever wrote.)

We parents (now avid fans of Grisham, Cornwell et al) are masters of doublethink. As Kate Agnew, an English children's bookseller, said in a recent article: "Although parents will say they had all the classics when they were young, it is amazing how few have actually read them. What they mean is that they had a copy in the house."

But do Irish parents fight with their children in the bookshop over what to buy? (Agnew reports overhearing deals where a parent allows one "trashy" book for every two "good" books, or insists they read one in French for every one in English.) If they do, they won't get much support from the experts who want to promote children's reading.

Valerie Coghlan, joint editor of The Big Guide To Irish Children's Books (published last week) and a trustee of the Irish Children's Book Trust, says that it is perfectly normal for children to get hooked on series" books.

Kids like these books because they're safe and repetitive and they know what's going to happen." Adults get twitchy about the genre, fearing that bland writing, plots, and characterisation will somehow ruin a child for "good" books. But no matter how laudable your motives, experts agree that being coercive is wrong, wrong, wrong.

"There's a line to be drawn between being directive and interfering, and encouraging and supportive," says Coghlan. The real key to encouraging reading in the first place, and variety in a child's choice of reading in the second, is to make all sorts of books available to them - a ploy much more likely to work than criticising the books they love.

So how do you foster a love of reading in your children - and is it all that important to do so anyway? (The latter question may seem heretical to parents for whom it's an article of faith. The answer, according to librarians, is that not only does reading help you to pass exams and succeed in a complex world, it also opens your eyes and your mind to other ways of living, of thinking.

Most parents know that the best reading head start they can give their children is to be readers themselves, to have books in the house and to read to them from a very young age. But let's say that you've done everything literally by the book and your seven, eight, nine year old shows no signs of wanting to read much by themselves. What to do?

ROSEMARY WALTON, senior librarian at Ballymun public library and chairperson of the Youth Library Group suggests that if a child has a hobby, or a pet, hunt out a well illustrated non fiction book on that subject.

"A child will make a huge effort to decipher text if it's a subject he or she is interested in, whether it's pets or castles or dinosaurs." And she agrees with Valerie Coghlan that picture books are meant for older children too and may appeal to a reluctant reader.

Coghlan says: "I do feel strongly that parents put children off picture books which they can read, saying: `Don't buy that, you'll be finished it in five minutes'. But there are great picture books for older children now by writer illustrators like Raymond Briggs, Anthony Browne, and in Ireland, PJ lynch."

Rosemary Hetherington, librarian in the children's and schools department of Dublin Corporation Public Libraries, and co ordinator of the Children's Book Festival, starting this week, believes that the explosion of Irish children's books over the past decade helps too, because reading something set locally appeals to many children. She does believe that children should be encouraged to move on from the "serials" the fast food of the children's book world - but very very gently. There are other ways of getting reluctant readers interested in books which include buying audio books, or reading the first chapter of a book to them yourself. And indeed, both Coghlan and Walton say there is no age limit for reading to children; you should go on doing it as long as they want you to.

Even if you're a parent who isn't a reader and finds all this daunting, the real key is still availability. Build trips to the bookshop and the library (most parents will find it hard to find a keen reader) into your routine, and soon you'll find you've brought your child to book.