Gilly Flower

I've been meaning to put up this link for ages, although I imagine most (all?) of you are aware of the issue anyway.

If not though you may like to consider checking it out, and - assuming you agree of course - adding your name to those who oppose this decision, which is obviously a global one.

"To all authors and illustrators

Many of you will have noticed that over the last week we have hugely expanded the Comments sections on the website www.notoagebanding.org Many hundreds of concerned people had written to us, and we have chosen a typical selection of their views and arguments and put them into separate sections incorporating the views of Education Professionals, Librarians, Book Trade, Authors, Government, Family Members and Readers.

It is our opinion that your publisher may well be startled to learn of the response to this age-banding initiative from so many informed people who currently purchase our books, often in considerable numbers.

We are therefore asking you to forward this letter to all the editors and publishers with whom you deal, in the hope that they will be good enough to take the time to look at this huge variety of comments. For convenience, at the foot of this email we have provided links to each specific section, though of course it may be simpler in many cases for the recipient of the email simply to go directly to the website and click on particular sections there.

Please do not simply assume that others will be in touch with the people with whom you yourself deal. We believe that those who work in publishing houses will easily understand how very important this issue is to all of us, and everybody else who cares and knows about young people's reading. They therefore surely will not mind getting a copy of this email from several different sources.

Thank you."