What started as a way to encourage my daughter to read snowballed into writing a book

Cork mum-of-two and author Claire Hartnett is a big reader and sees a love of books as a wonderful gift to pass on to her children. So it was particularly difficult to see her young daughter disengage from books while remaining hooked on her phone. Hartnett tells Helen O’Callaghan how the situation sparked the drive to write a novel for her daughter and for every young person like her

Claire Hartnett and her daughter Bree. Claire wrote a book to encourage her 14-year-old daughter to put down her phone and pick up a book instead. Picture: Chani Anderson

My daughter, Bree, had never been a fierce reader, but we’d always read together and up to a certain age she had a lot of interest until the iPad came on the scene when she was 11 or so.

And then I could see it myself: The screen killing her capacity to sit with just words on a page. I tried different types of books with her, but nothing could engage her. I felt guilty — I’d bought her the screen, I’d held out as long as I could, but you have that pressure, when everyone has it in school.

I felt annoyance that I’d handed her something way more addictive than a book. And the more the phone was around, the more it felt like if you got her to sit down and read something, you were forcing her to do it. And she’d resist — you’re actually causing a bigger problem because all she’s thinking is ‘when am I going to get this done and the screen back in my hand’.

Phones, TikTok — it’s all so quick and entertaining. Kids don’t have to follow it, or hold anything in their head, or what a character did in chapter two that you need to remember two chapters on, or who’s related to who. What’s being shown on the screen is over in 30 seconds, and then there’s something new.

Claire Hartnett and her daughter Bree. Claire wrote a book to encourage her 14-year-old daughter to put down her phone and pick up a book instead. Picture: Chani Anderson

I could see her losing the attention span required to follow a novel, to feel tension build over pages rather than seconds, to be able to take things slowly — where you have to work through to find out what happens in the end.

We were out for a walk one summer evening in 2024 — she was 12 — and I started a conversation: “What’s the problem with the books?” And she said: “They’re boring, there’s nothing that grabs me and keeps my attention”.

I said: “Right, describe the perfect book for me. What would it contain?” And it’s gas because she was very specific; she said ‘a murder mystery, local — somewhere I’d recognise — and funny’. And the chapters had to be short.

Because it was all so specific, I said: “Do you know what? I’ll give it a go — I’ll write the book for you”. And I just took off and wrote away. I was printing off the chapters on A4 paper, each one as I finished it and giving it to her to read in the evenings. And she was giving me feedback — “No Mom, that’d never happen”, or “That’s too cringe, you can’t put that in”.

Claire Hartnett and her daughter Bree. Claire wrote a book to encourage her 14-year-old daughter to put down her phone and pick up a book instead. Picture: Chani Anderson

I took it on board, rewriting as I was going. As she was telling me about previous chapters and what was wrong, I was editing them and writing the rest. And we did get to the end and she had enjoyed it.

The following Christmas, my sister was looking for a book for her son who’s a year younger than Bree. I printed it off for him, and all three of her kids read it and enjoyed it. I thought OMG! Maybe someone else would like to read it. So those kids were sort of my guinea pigs.

What started as a way to encourage my daughter to read snowballed into a much bigger project. I went down the self-publishing route. The story centres around a 14-year-old who, if she wants her Revolut card topped up, must help her mother with their car boot sale stall once a month, a task also meant to improve her poor social skills. She despises everything about this — the weather, the customers, the risk of being spotted by her peers. When a dead body turns up at the car boot sale, she is thrust into the middle of a real-life murder case.

Claire Hartnett, who wrote a book in a bid to encourage her daughter Bree to put down her phone and rediscover a love of reading. Picture: Chani Anderson

The book gives teens a setting they recognise, characters who sound like their friends, and good old-fashioned Cork family dynamics they can relate to.

For me, it was like the book needed to come out. Once I started writing, I just had to keep going. It was an artistic, creative outlet. If you’re creative, you’re looking for a place to let that creativity flow into, and I don’t have that in my work. My husband and I run a machinery business.

For Bree, first of all, she was contributing to the development of the book, influencing how it was structured, the whole plot. Secondly, it got her back into reading. It sort of created a habit. Even though I was only asking her to read for 10 minutes in the evening, it was a daily habit — and if you start a habit, you might stick with it. And it gave us something to talk about, a topic of conversation, something we could reflect on together.

Now I’ve caught the writing bug, and a follow-up book is well under way. I set aside one hour a day for my writing and sanity! Outside of that, I’m a regular mom — a member of Blarney Community Choir who can be found wherever there’s a Cork hurling match on!

• Donoughmore-based mother Claire Hartnett wrote ‘Murder, Great for My Social Skills’, a young adult murder mystery set in Co Cork, to address one of the biggest challenges facing reading culture today: The dramatic fall-off in young readers. Available on Amazon and at independent bookshops.