Parents should fight for more cash to be spent on classroom books in a campaign on the lines of Jamie Oliver's high-profile drive to improve school meals, the children's laureate, Michael Morpurgo, says today.

Morpurgo - the closest the UK has to a "books champion" - warns that they have become marginalised after a funding shortage and as schools have concentrated spending on computers and technology. A recent survey revealed that 34% of primary schools and 20% of secondary schools in the state sector now spend less than £10 a head on books every year.

In an interview in today's Education Guardian, the best-selling children's author says the benefits of books are more difficult to measure than, say, those of food and exercise, but books and storytelling deserve to be put "at the heart of school life". Parents should launch a campaign to ensure that headteachers ringfence enough money for new books.

"It's easy for people to see the benefits of good food and exercise. But the benefits of books are far less obvious," he said. "Governments like things they can measure and for which they can set targets to show they are doing their job properly, so education has become ever more focused on delivering an extremely narrow set of results.

"Along the way, books have become marginalised - mere educational tools - and everyone from teachers to pupils has lost some of the magic of reading.

"Of course, we have to ensure that everyone reaches the basic standards of reading and writing, but how are you going to achieve that without first giving children a sense of fascination and wonderment for books? That means putting books and storytelling at the heart of school life."

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many schools are prioritising spending on ICT (information and communication technology) over books, not only because it impresses parents but also because it can trigger a favourable rating from the government's education watchdog, Ofsted.

Mr Morpurgo admits he is concerned that, with the curriculum becoming ever more prescriptive, some books are losing their ability to excite: "Where textbooks have a narrow remit - a sole purpose of getting a child through a set curriculum - they are unlikely to be that educationally challenging. Teachers and children will pick up on this and switch off."

Funding for school books is no longer a clearcut issue. The last time money was earmarked specifically for books was in March 1999, when the government used an underspend in the budget to announce a one-off £60m package. Since then, books have been cut out of the centralised picture.

The funding crisis three years ago led to many schools being forced to spend less on books to preserve jobs. Although the government's proposed three-year school funding settlement, starting next year, will give headteachers the power to spend government cash as they wish, they also have to find money for more classroom assistants as part of a national workload agreement.

· A quarter of adults have changed their eating habits after celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's crusade to improve school dinners, a study revealed yesterday.

Following the success of Channel 4's Jamie's School Dinners, and the public debate that ensued on healthy eating, people's attitudes to nutrition have changed, according to research by the private medical insurer PruHealth. Some 28% of adults say they think more about the meals they prepare at home as a direct result of the series.