Got the best news this week! My mother sent me a newspaper clipping from England. I’ve included it below. Age-Banding, in case you don’t know, is a motion proposed by a group of big publishers to include banners in the cover artwork of books which would, according to someone other than the author, indicate the ‘right’ age for the book. Absolutely ludicrous! Anyway, having Rowling on board is wonderful.
ROWLING JOINS FIGHT AGAINST AGE BANDS FOR BOOKS
By Tom Peterkin
JK ROWLING has joined the fight against publishers’ plans to categorise children’s books by introducing age bands at which they should be read.
The Harry Potter author has become the latest recruit to the campaign started by Philip Pullman, the children’s writer and creator of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Three previous Children’s Laureates, Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Dame Jacqueline Wilson, plus Michael Rosen, the current laureate, are among 3,000 signatories to a petition that includes Terry Pratchett and Alexander McCall-Smith.
The Publishers’Association wants new titles and reprints to indicate ‘suitable’ ages of five-plus, seven-plus, nine-plus, 11-plus and 13-plus/teen depending on how adult their themes are.
Mr. Pullman said: “You simply can’t decide who your readership will be. Nor do I want to, because declaring that it’s for any group in particular means excluding every other group.”
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Make that 4170 at the last count.
Good to hear! I’m so glad so many writers are stepping up.
Rowling and Pullman are perfect spokespeople too. The ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy works on so many levels. I know that the books have many pre-teen fans who identify with Lyra and love the sheer adventure, the gyptians, the armored bears, the daemons, and probably skate over the references to original sin and the deeper themes of religious intolerance. They are books that can be enjoyed at different times in one’s life, and with each reading a deeper meaning is uncovered; like all the best stories.
And the initial Harry Potter audience has grown up with their hero as the books became darker and more involved. If the age-banding people had their way, each book in the series would have to carry a different age recommendation which is just silly. Evidently younger readers who are discovering the books now, are reading them voraciously one after the other, which is as it should be. And older readers who are just now reading them should not be dissuaded from starting with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s (Philosopher’s) Stone merely because they are considered ‘too old’ to read it. After all, Bloomsbury understood that adults wanted to read them too, and published versions with more ‘adult’ covers so that no one would be embarrassed to be caught reading a ‘children’s book.’