In 1979 the journal Signal published a pamphlet entitled Learning to Read with Picture Books by Jill Bennett (who has been a reviewer for Books for Keeps from Issue No. 1). This highly influential publication encouraged a generation of teachers to put aside mind numbingly tedious reading schemes in favour of helping children to learn to read using ‘real’ picture books.

For almost 27 years, Books for Keeps has recorded, written about and reviewed virtually every aspect of children’s books. We have interviewed and published articles by and about hundreds of authors, poets, illustrators, editors, publicists, teachers, librarians and academics.

In a fascinating report * on research into children’s cognitive development carried out since 1967, the crucial role of pretend play in helping children understand cognition itself is emphasised. Researchers Usha Goswami of the University of Cambridge and Peter Bryant of the University of Oxford describe pretend play as the ‘earliest manifestation of a child’s developing ability to characterise their own cognitive relation to knowledge’.

The Commission for Racial Equality has said that Hergé’s Tintin in the Congo, first published in 1931, depicts ‘hideous racial prejudice’. The comment came after a member of the public who came across the strip cartoon book in a branch of Borders complained: ‘I was aghast to see page after page of representations of black African people as baboons or monkeys, bowing before a white teenager and speaking like retarded children.’

With the much heralded publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows an astounding publishing phenomenon has finally come to an end. The history of Harry Potter is well known – how, after eight rejections, a first novel written in coffee shops by single mother Joanne Rowling was finally accepted by Bloomsbury and published in 1997. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was to become the first of seven titles, one volume for each of Harry’s years at Hogwarts. The books’ instant popularity with adult as well as child readers then led to the simultaneous publication of each new title in two editions – one aimed at adults and one at children.

Readers of Books for Keeps do not need me to blow a trumpet on behalf of the importance of reading to children, whether it’s a bedtime story or a story read to a class or library group. Apart from the pleasure of the story itself, listening to stories sets the groundwork for strong listening and memory skills as well as creating that all important interest in the written word. It is also well known that parental involvement in reading has more of an influence on a child’s achievement than any other factor.

In 1981 Susanne Bosche’s photo-story book, Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin , about a day in the life of a little girl who lives with two daddies (her biological father and his male partner) was published in the UK. It caused an outcry and led to the infamous Section 28 which was supposed to ban books in schools that ‘promoted’ homosexuality.

Philippa Pearce was not a prolific writer given that her writing career spanned 47 years from the publication of Minnow on the Say in 1958 to The Little Gentleman in 2005.

What is going on at Arts Council England? Following a purge, five out of six of its art form directors have been ‘let go’, including Literature’s highly respected Gary McKeone. Bizarrely, the Chair of Arts Council England, Sir Christopher Frayling, doesn’t seem to have a clue. In an article in The Sunday Times* he revealed that he had been taken aback by the exodus: ‘I didn’t realise that the changes would be so dramatic. It might seem like a huge purge. Yes, the council is now a very tense and demoralised place,’ he said.