Book Selection for 2012

We held the Letterbox Club 2012 book selection meeting at Book House on Wednesday, 28 September.

The selection panel met to select possible titles for all four Letterbox parcels available next year.

Each year Letterbox Club invites a range of experts to be part of the panel - people who work with children's books, such as librarians, publishers, academics and authors, or with looked-after children, such as foster carers and education professionals.

This year's meeting was co-chaired by Marian Keen-Downs, Booktrust's Head of Targeted Programmes; and Rose Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Leicester, School of Education, who is also Letterbox Club's founder.

The 2012 panel was made up of:

Tony Bradman - Author/Editor

Sue Walters - Learning and Participation Coordinator, Seven Stories

Lucy Love - Development Manager, Children & Young People, Enfield Libraries

Margaret Dunn - Head Teacher and Foster Carer, Northern Ireland

The selection process

The Letterbox Club is aimed at a specific group of children and so differs from the other Booktrust bookgifting programmes in its criteria for selecting books.

Each of the six parcels children receive contains two books, so the panel has to select approximately 48 books in total - 12 each for Years 3-4 (age 7-9), Years 5-6 (age 9-11), Years 7-8 (age 11-13) and for children aged 7-11 with special educational needs, who are working below National Curriculum Level 1. Some titles from previous years will be reselected if they have proved to be highly popular and the panel opts to keep them on the list.

Bringing new worlds

We aim to provide books that stimulate interest by reflecting the child's own life or bringing new worlds to them. We want to encourage children to read for pleasure.

The books selected should include a mix of different genres to give the children access to a wide selection of material, including: fairy tales, classic and contemporary stories, picture books, novelty/joke books, poetry, non-fiction and audio books.

The panel will try to select books that reflect the diversity of life in Britain. Subjects which might cause offence will be avoided.

Inclusive of all children

The aim of Booktrust's independent panels is to select the most appropriate and best-written, illustrated and designed books for our packs; books that capture interest and imagination and that stimulate a dialogue between parent/carer and their young children, and also between children and their peers.

Booktrust negotiates costs with individual publishers and sometimes a slight specification change is agreed in order to keep costs within budget or to ensure that the artwork promotes positive images of diversity and are, as far as possible, inclusive of all children. Publishers have been hugely supportive of the Booktrust bookgifting programmes.