No to Age Banding
LATEST SUPPORTERS
We are writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, booksellers, publishers, educationalists, psychologists, parents and grandparents. Some of the undersigned writers and illustrators have a measure of control over what appears on the covers of their books; others have less.
But we are all agreed that the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.
We take this step to disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures, and to state our passionately-held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out.
The list of supporters has grown so much that we have split it into six. This page has the latest additions to the list which now has 4,781 names. Other pages have people whose surnames begin A-C, D-G, H-L, M-O, P-S and T-Z.
Alison Littlewood (Reader)
Mary Kelly (Specialist teacher)
Ben Bransfield (English Teacher)
Adelle Hopper (Reader and journalist )
Barbara Walton (Librarian and Author)
Chris Ashton (Family Education Manager )
Lindsay Williame (Primary school teacher)
Anna Cheetham (Reader)
Catherine Owens (School librarian)
Sally Acott (Devoted reader)
Rachel Southern (Primary school teacher)
Tod Chambers (Multimedia Writer )
Darren Hartwell (Assistant Headteacher)
Brian Katcher (School librarian and young adult author)
Laurence Cuffe (Teacher)
Sarah-Jane Gray (Teacher)
David Eden (Writer and parent)
Michelle L Conklin (Reader, writer and educator)
Sunder Cameron Addams (author, editor, writing tutor)
Andrew Sennett (Parent and Reader)
Karolina Kalosza (Reader)
Lewis Delderfield (Adventure Playground Play Assistant)
Micah Cooper (Library Student)
Margaret Hemming (School librarian)
Ralph Lagana (Teacher)
Tina Hamby (Elementary Literacy Teacher)
The list of supporters has grown so much that we have split it into six. Other pages have people whose surnames begin A-C, D-G, H-L, M-O, P-S and T-Z.
NB Please bear with us if your name is not yet on this list. This page has the latest additions to the list, up to 1pm on Saturday 20 March. There is an inevitable delay between you sending your email, us receiving it (which can take many hours) and it being uploaded.
To sign up and show your support for this statement, send an email to . We will publish your name and any relevant description (eg author, librarian, bookseller) on this web site. We'll keep your email address confidential and won't pass it to anybody else, but we may write occasionally with relevant news.
Our full statement is on the front page.
We've had reports that the above link is garbled in some browsers. If that is the case, please accept our apologies: the link is coded to fool the spammers but it's obviously fooling some browsers too. If necessary type the email address signup at notoagebanding dot org into your email program.