Launched in 1980, the UK’s leading, independent children’s book magazine, has reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children. Sir Philip Pullman, CBE, FRSL called Books for Keeps “The most important periodical in the world of British children's books.”
With over 12,500 reviews and more than 2,000 articles including interviews with the top children’s authors and illustrators, Books for Keeps had a big problem. Although they were the first to ever star rate children’s books, which caused a certain amount of uproar at the time, they did not have much in terms of funding to keep up with the times and move their database completely online.
I learned another hard lesson in business here because even though I did know the budget, I decided to take on the project anyway because I believed it was important for this to be online.
For decades, the founder had typed in all the details of the thousands of books they had reviewed. This ended up taking months to clean up, however I am very proud of the end result, which still powers the site many parents and school teachers use on a regular basis.
