SAY NO TO AGE BANDING ON CHILDREN'S BOOKS

A letter from Philip Pullman who has been leading the author revolt on this matter:

A meeting has been arranged with representatives of the publishers,
including Simon Juden, Chief Executive of the Publishers Association,
Kate Bostock of the PA, and Elaine McQuade of Scholastic. I will
putting our case, and I will be joined by Mark Le Fanu and Celia Rees
of the Society of Authors. The meeting will take place on Thursday 3
July at Scholastic Children's books.

There isn't an agenda yet, but the purpose of the meeting is to
clarify and reiterate our objections to the age-ranging proposal and
see if we can help the PA see what a blunder they've made. I would
also like to discover several things about the 'research' which so far
remain opaque.

All your comments and experiences have been very helpful. If there is
anything in particular you would like me to raise on your behalf, do
please contact me at feedback@notoagebanding.org
I can't guarantee to do so, of course, because I don't know how many
people will respond, but anything you can let me know in addition to
what you've already communicated to us would be extremely helpful. It
would be especially helpful to hear from teachers and experts in
reading development, since the PA's research obviously took no account
of the problems their proposal might cause in this field.

I shall report on the outcome of the meeting very soon after it's
happened.

Philip Pullman

Read earlier report from The Telegraph on this subject,