Focus on the Child: Libraries, Literacy and Learning
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Cover Story
This issue's cover is a photograph of Anne Frank whose diary is discussed by Michael Rosen fifty years after its first publication. Following the arrest of the Frank family and their companions, the secret annex in Amsterdam where they had been in hiding was locked up and everybody forbidden to enter it, since Jewish possessions became Nazi property and were carted away. Before this happened, the young woman, Miep Gies, who had provided those in hiding with food and who had a second key to the annex, risked herself once more by entering it. Miep retrieved Anne's diary from the devastation together with the Frank family photograph album.
Thanks to Penguin Children's Books for help in reproducing this cover.
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Contributions by Keith Barker and Margaret Kinnell
As the authors note, it is over twenty years since Janet Hill's groundbreaking book, Children are People, was published, and it is timely to reassess progress made in library services for young people. This book surveys all aspects of the field (librarianship, publishing, bookselling, the child, etc.), and gives a useful summary of the current position, optimistic about the future of reading and pessimistic about the dire state of public and school libraries in 1996, and the demotion of work with children as a specialist area (one reason for this may be the new 'managerialism' - see the chapter by Margaret Kinnell as an example!). This is a major work which should be widely read, especially for a deeper understanding of the changes in public library services. However, despite its claim to taking a 'philosophical' approach, it does not have the visionary and critical qualities of Janet Hill's book.
