ABSTRACT
On 12 September 1997, The Times Educational Supplement published a ‘guide to literacy projects’ in which Maureen O’Connor attempted a summary of seventeen publications. Some were classroom-based schemes; others supplied ‘help with phonics’; the third group were concerned with promoting reading. I wrote to all the publishers, and what follows is an attempt to build a critique of the burgeoning literacy industry based on what these publishers sent me. Four questions emerged in my thinking as I tried to evaluate the material that I had been sent.
