‘Read to Live’ – all of the contributors to this book would very much agree with Gustav Flaubert's (1857) motto and, in all their different voices and with all their very different experiences and knowledge, they share with me the absolute and fundamental belief that it is essential for the life chances of every child, everywhere, that they can read.

In this introduction I will highlight some of the UK policy framework and international research evidence that underpins this belief. Although most of the contributors are from the UK and reflect UK experience, the issues faced and strategies developed are more universal. Every country will have its own political agenda, but readers will be able to recognize how campaigners for libraries and reading have used the current context to best advantage, and will gain insight from this. Thus the subsequent chapters will take us from the very youngest potential readers to young people on the fringes of society in some of the most deprived socio-economic neighbourhoods in the UK, covering some of the most innovative and yet long-standing and successful reading promotion strategies in the world. We have envisaged our readers as those who are trying to find out the background and context to child reader development in libraries and schools and to equip themselves to take this development forward. They may be a student librarian, a teacher or consultant concerned with reading and literacy, a practitioner in either field with new responsibilities or an established practitioner or manager looking for ideas and inspiration.

As former Children's Laureate, Michael Morpurgo, put it so beautifully in an article in The Times in 2009: