the adult market—a dictionary of dates, for example, or a field guide to wild birds. At
one time, there was a perceived shortage of information books for children under seven
years (Heeks 1982:3), but this has been partly overcome by publication of books which
can be described as induction guides to everyday life. Typical examples are Linda Goes
to Hospital by Barry Wade (Black 1981); My First Book of Time by Claire Llewellyn
(Dorling Kindersley 1981) and Clare’s New Baby Brother by Nigel Snell (Evans 1992).
Parents have long been interested in buying books to assist their children’s education,
an interest usually manifested in a search for a reasonably priced encyclopedia to help
with homework tasks. More recently, in Britain, a new market has emerged, focused on
learning needs of young children. So, for example, the Headstart series from Hodder and
Stoughton covers key skills of number, reading and writing. In the past such topics
would have been covered by textbooks and mediated by teachers rather than parents.
In schools, information books have been widely used for the past three decades to
supplement textbooks and direct experience. In the pre-teen years school work has often
been based around centres of interest, an approach usually called the project or topic
method which, typically, involves work across a number of subject disciplines and
promotes information-gathering skills. The comparison of different sources has
generated a wide demand for information books. The National Curriculum which came
into effect in England and Wales in 1989 tended to narrow the range of subjects studied
in schools, but to increase the range of resources required within each subject.
It is some years since a thorough study of the reading interests of English children
was undertaken but there is some indication of an increase in popularity of non-fiction.
A benchmark study by A.J.Jenkinson published in 1940, found that the four categories
of sport, travel, biography and technical books
do not at any age in either type of school attract much attention. Not one of them
ever reaches the level of 3 per cent of the total amount of attention given to reading
books out of school.
Jenkinson 1940:184By 1972 Margery Fisher, in looking at the assumption that there are more readers of
fiction than of non-fiction, was declaring that ‘statistics suggest otherwise’. No sources,
however, are quoted (Fisher 1972:9). Meanwhile the results of a major survey, Children’s
Reading Interests published in 1975, show non-fiction reading as a minority activity—no
more than 14.5 per cent of the sample’s total reading (Whitehead et al. 1975:23). A
slightly later study of 7 to 9-year-olds found that 19 per cent of 7 to 8-year-olds, and 13
per cent of 9-year-olds enjoyed non-fiction, but with boys showing a greater preference
for information books than girls in both age groups (Southgate et al. 1981:214, 223).
A less formal study, of 12-year-olds in one English school, found that non-fiction
reading by boys amounted to 71 per cent of their total reading, with the figure for girls
reaching 53 per cent (Davies 1991:18). These results are similar to those of a survey of
15-year-olds in 1980, and covering 349 schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
(Department of Education and Science 1983), which showed that 52 per cent of
respondents enjoyed reading non-fiction: 56 per cent of the boys; 48 per cent of the
girls. For 35 per cent of boys and 23 per cent of girls (28 per cent overall) non-fiction
INFORMATION BOOKS 433