Guides to children’s reading are so numerous, and often so commercially driven, that anyone targeted by such things (and it is usually parents, teachers, and librarians in public and school libraries) is right to be sceptical. This is why it is good to have reliable and up to date selections made by experienced practitioners with that practical knowledge built up over time which retains its enthusiasm for new reads and readers. Norah Irvin and Lesley Cooper’s first edition of Who Next … ? appeared in 1999 and proved very useful as a way of pointing out who to read next when you had finished one of your favourite authors – Danziger or Lowry, Fine or Byars, if you liked Judy Blume, or Diana Wynne Jones or Kaye Umansky if you liked Harry Potter and have read everything in sight. This kind of help is good for readers and even better for parents, teachers and librarians, who can never keep up with everything, and who can make connections between books and authors but not all the time.
The new edition of Who Next … ? is edited by Norah Irvin, who has been a librarian with Hertfordshire Schools Library Service in England. It provides a substantially updated collection of 436 English‐language fiction authors for children and young people which credibly and creditably reflects what readers are actually reading and can (and should) find in libraries and bookshops. It is the counterpart for children of another well‐established work from the Library & Information Statistics Unit (LISU), on fiction for adults, called Who Else Writes Like … ? A Reader’s Guide to Fiction Authors, now in its fourth edition. LISU is a national information‐related research unit based at the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University in England, that also publishes statistical surveys of library and information services of substantial value to professionals in the field. Other works to compare with Who Next … ? have to be Hobson (1999) and the older Malden and Hobson 1993. Relevant magazines include Books for Keeps, Carousel, and The School Librarian.
The authors included in Who Next … ? extend from classics like E. Nesbit and Susan Coolidge, Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl, up to popular modern writers like Theresa Breslin and Philip Pullman. The work is divided into three reading categories, from five to seven, from eight to eleven, and from 12 to 14, confidently picked with some highly acceptable crossovers. Entries are by author, indicating “authors like them”, citing key works, and pointing out fictional themes such as ghost/supernatural, animals, family, fantasy, and humour. New and old names mix well in each category, Whybrow with Berenstain, McBratney with Cunliffe, Ashley with Gleitzman, C.S. Lewis with Morpurgo, Le Guin with Hicyilmaz, Aiken with Naidoo, and so this is not only an easy way to push your experience of reading forward, but also a good checklist of what fiction you have in your library. Topics and reading levels (never easy to handle in such guides) are realistic, and the subjects or themes down‐to‐earth. Historians of children’s reading will find the increasing importance of social issues, the supernatural, other cultures and war no surprise. Editions and bibliographical details are not provided.
There is an index by genre and theme, sub‐divided by the three age categories, a list of picture books for older readers (picture books for younger readers have been excluded), further lists of series and prizes, and finally an index. The series section is based on information supplied by Peters Bookselling Services of Birmingham, whose Web site at peters‐books.co.uk is worth a visit for information about some of the authors. Irvin rightly lists other works, like The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Books in English, the Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature, and Nicholas Tucker’s two Rough Guides (to children’s books 0‐5 and 5‐11) for background and comparison. So Who Next … ? is a value‐for‐money practitioner’s tool likely to be just as useful and popular among readers and their parents. But it tantalizes – you have to read the books – you cannot escape that!
