Anne Johnstone considers one publisher's scheme to tempt reluctant child readers to pick up a book.

What sort of book can you offer to a 12-year-old with a reading age of eight? There are truckloads of novellas for new readers, but most have plots and characters an older child would find boring and babyish, and formats that would leave them feeling patronised.

Last year I spent hours with learning support teacher, Chris Severin, reading and discussing dozens of books sent to us by publishers in response to a request for material for older children with reading difficulties.

We came up with a list of pacey, well-crafted stories which would neither terrify nor humiliate a reluctant reader, but it took a lot of sifting. Pity the child, parent or teacher without the time or Chris's immense experience of coaxing kids over the threshold into independent reading, faced with the same task.

At the time, Chris said she would love to see a publisher catering specifically for these children. Well, some dreams do come true. So it is that this

month sees the arrival of a

new publisher based in Edinburgh and catering specifically for reluctant readers.

The first six titles from Barrington Stoke are aimed at children right up to 13, but with a reading age of about eight.

Chairman Patience Thomson is a leading expert on dyslexia, having come to the subject the hard way - as a mother. Of course, ''reluctant readers'' (the current jargon for children with reading difficulties) aren't necessarily dyslexic. They may have another specific learning difficulty. Or maybe it's because English isn't their first language, or because they lack confidence. Maybe they find books boring or unimportant. Many people believe a less pejorative term for this group would be ''emergent readers''.

Thomson says: ''In the past they have often been short-changed and patronised.'' Simplistic measurements like sentence length or the number of syllables in a word have been used to calculate reading age. She believes factors such as familiarity of vocabulary, and sentence structure can dramatically affect readability. So a dinosaur fanatic has no problem decoding ''tyrannosaurus'' but might be stumped by a word like ''metre''. That's why Barrington Stoke has done away with the old idea of issuing restricted word lists to authors writing for reluctant readers, a system which inevitably produces stilted characterless prose. They merely insist that vocabulary is simple without being simplistic.

Much research has gone into the presentation of the books. Chapters are short with frequent paragraph breaks. There's an illustration on nearly every page to provide added interest and carry the story forward.

Small print can be difficult to decipher, while big print patronises older readers. Barrington Stoke have gone for something in between, a size approved by their juvenile tasting panel. The exclusively-designed font is shaped like handwriting.

The books are printed on cream-coloured paper, more restful on the eye than Persil white.

However, Lucy Juckes, director of Barrington Stoke and former sales director at Bloomsbury Publishing, admits that all these details are secondary to the central challenge: ''If you haven't got a gripping story, it doesn't matter what you do.''

The company name comes from a celebrated storyteller who would set down his lantern in a circle of stones, whenever he reached a new village at twilight, and entrance the children with one great story after another.

Never heard of him? Not surprising, as he never existed. The fabricated myth is to emphasise a key point: story is all. A child will not learn to read until he or she is infused by the desire to know what is on the next page.

That's why Barrington Stoke picked a dazzling group of award-winning storytellers to write their first titles. Michael Morpurgo (Whitbread and Smarties veteran) has conjured up a perceptive analysis of what it feels like to be different in

Wartman, which has a satisfying

final twist.

Mary Hoffman (as in Amazing Grace) has her hero create a perfect virtual friend but the course of true friendship never runs smooth in cyberspace.

Arran-based author, Alison Prince, who won a Guardian Children's Fiction Award with Sherwood Hero, set in Glasgow, was delighted to be asked to join the team: ''I do a lot of work in schools and I'm always aware that not every child is going to romp through books like a fully literate adult. A lot try to cater for reluctant readers by trying to cut down the vocabulary but it's very artificial and makes children feel head-patted.

''We've got to respect their intellect. Just because children have difficulty reading doesn't mean they are total prats.'' Her story about a Scottish boy who finds a screwdriver and uses it to vent his frustration and boredom by taking his school apart, is based on a lad her son once knew.

The other theme about a pupil becoming a headmaster for a day came out of a workshop she ran in a now-defunct Glasgow secondary school. ''They were so responsible in what they wanted to do, I thought these kids could have run a school. They were very practical, especially about the exclusion of trouble-makers.''

Barrington Stoke set few style rules beyond sentence structure. Authors were told to go easy on subordinate clauses.

Once the scripts were in, Patience Thomson went through each one, word by word for readability, then tested them on small groups of children.

There is a sort of missionary zeal about this publishing venture. Anyone who has experienced the embarrassment and desperation of children whose reading has simply failed to take off with their peers, will applaud that. Around the age of 12 a child's reading is generally moving from being a decoding to a language activity. Lucy Juckes compares the children left behind to swimmers still reliant on armbands or cyclists who can't manage without stabilisers.

Do they work? Barrington Stoke has certainly come up with six very well-written stories which are well-illustrated and clear to follow. The company has recently landed a grant from the Scottish Arts Council for a large scale follow-up exercise to see if it has got it right.

A worksheet sent out with every order will invite children to tell the publishers how reader-friendly and enjoyable they found the books. Some of these juvenile critics will be invited to become advisers to the company.

In the National Year of Literacy, at a time when the issue has at last come to the top of the political agenda, it is essential that more publishers address this yawning gap in the children's book market.

n Barrington Stoke's first six titles are: Wartman by Michael Morpurgo; The

Gingerbread House by Adele Geras; Screw Loose by Alison Prince; Kick Back by Vivian French; Virtual Friend by Mary Hoffman and Billy the Squid by Colin Dowland.

All at #3.99.