“Excuse me – I’ve got to go and talk to a Penguin,” she laughs. Publishers like Marilyn. They send her uncorrected proofs, keen to get her opinion. She won’t stock anything she hasn’t read first. Nor will she take anything into schools she can’t personally vouch for. It staggers children and teenagers when they see her in their school library among her thousand and one books and she’s read all of them It staggers teachers too – oh for the time to read so many and to know what to recommend or use in class! But she can help with this too.

The excellent website has all kinds of ‘Marilyn recommends..’ booklists, including books every teacher must know, books for new teachers, book lists for everyone at all key stages from special needs to gifted, themed booklists – novels (of course) poetry and plays and non-fiction. The lists are on themes – issues and subjects children and teenagers really care about: there are books identified by such themes as bullying, gender, friendship, love, eating disorders, problems with parents, problems with school, drugs, divorce, family problems, multicultural issues, war, football, action stories, social deprivation, celebrity, there is even a bereavement booklist. Secondary teachers will be glad of the 14+ booklist. Apart from Carnegie and a very few other annual booklists, it is very difficult to get this kind of informed, enthusiastic guidance on what is out there and what needs to be in our classroom, or (just as crucial) our and our pupils’ homes (Sensibly there are ‘home lists’ as well as school/teachers lists).

For all the attention (and huge sums) paid to literacy and how to teach it in the SATs and Strategy era, this kind of reading focus has not been a classroom priority for a long time, which is perhaps why the percentage of children reading for pleasure in Britain is the lowest in Europe. Marilyn’s booklists and books are not organised around teaching connectives or narrative hooks or other ‘reading strategies’. They address what pupils actually care and worry about. They go to the heart of reading – they are books for life.

Marilyn is passionate about the impact an English teacher can have - through reading – on the rest of a person’s life. Her own life and school experience is testament to that. Having begun secondary education in Ashby de la Zouch (what is it about books and Ashby de la Zouch? – maybe Adrian Mole can tell us!) she encountered her ‘great’ English teacher.

“Her name was Christine Burden and one day she gave me a personal, hand scrawled book list and said, you must go to University and do English.” Which, of course, she did.

This is a common theme among practitioners: always it’s the teacher – invariably the English teacher – who enthuses the pupil for life via a book. The way they bring it alive, the way they love the words.

“That teacher taught me to read – not just to be literate – to read. To love books.”

“Have you finished the booklist yet?” I quipped, knowing Marilyn’s ability to get through a shelf of books in a week. “Actually, I only finished the last one a couple of years ago – a play - Ionesco’s ‘Bald Prima Donna”

“It must have been some list.”

“Yes. But I was reluctant to finish it because that would have been too final. Of course, it was different when I started taking my books out into schools. In those days, Some English departments were run by bearded pipe-smokers who didn’t think teenage books were proper literature. But there was also a lot less really good children’s literature then. There is so much now.”

Indeed there is. And the lowest percentage of reading for pleasure in Europe! What’s stopping us getting children reading all these wonderful books? What’s stopping us being that life-changing English teacher who knows exactly the book a particular child needs to get her or him (especially him!) reading. Not the bearded pipe-smoking don with his translations from Ovid and belief that Treasure Island is a bit juvenile. No. It’s a curriculum packed like sardines with ‘literacy’ and with no room to read. And a lot of very conscientious often now young teachers who are told what to do in very fine detail but who get very little guidance or encouragement in exploring whole books, books without heavy agendas attached. Marilyn is one of the few rare and precious exceptions. She will come out to your school, give CPD to your librarian, to your department, and give heart to all. She doesn’t even charge! (There might be some petrol/overnight money needed for a visit to Cornwall though!)

She brings table-loads of books into your school for children, teenagers and teachers to look at, browse and even buy – and she will still give her trademark enthusing and instructive talks about ‘how to find the right book’ to classes if the huge energy she puts into it seems still valuable. (Her energy shows no sign of flagging so it’s always worth trying to talk her into it with your particular situation!) But she couldn’t survive on these sales. Her income is derived mainly from supplying multiple copies of “Romeo and Juliet” and “To Kill a Mocking Bird”. And anyway, she’s never been in it for the money. Because of the endless bustle in the main bookshop rooms, we finally retreat to the office for yet more coffee and biscuits and to complete the interview.

I have one last question and it is interrupted by two phone calls. Dereham Library are featuring a new up and coming local author (David Miller ‘Shark Island’ from OUP) and the publisher wants Marilyn to do the display and books stall. She says yes. And Anne Fine calls – Marilyn is thrilled, still a fan of great authors however much time she spends rubbing shoulders with them – and continues a debate about whether children’s books should always end with some hope. Both women used to think so – now Anne has broken ranks with one of her endings. ‘Road of Bones’ is a desolate book. Marilyn still seems to want hope for children even in the most hopeless situations. What about Holocaust books I ask? (leaving my other question hanging for the moment). She tells me of a bit of spat she’s had with Morris Gleitzman (at a conference) about the second book in his Once – Then - Now trilogy. Marilyn is concerned about “where Morris leaves the child reader” at the end of that second book. Morris wants to do justice to the reality of that tragedy. I gather that the third book of the trilogy ‘Now’ might satisfy both.

I still haven’t finished my question. And now a seasoned but still very keen Year Head/English teacher visiting from the other side of the county – in her holidays - enquires about how Marilyn can help her school-in-transition. Within five minutes, Marliyn has made arrangements to train a keen but inexperienced new librarian, plus CPD for the keen but inexperienced new English department and several targeted reading lists for new teachers, teachers in need of refreshment, a deputy head whose English expertise and enthusiasm and capacity to overseee reading across the curriculum needs re-triggering, and while the time loading ‘must reads’ onto the now even more keen professional.

I’ve forgotten my question by now but it doesn’t matter. Marilyn has answered all the bigger and very worrying questions facing us about children’s reading – both in and out of school. I come away wishing we could have a Norfolk Children’s Book Centre in every county. The good news is that, thanks to the miracle of the world wide web (the website is excellent but don’t confuse it with the librarian of the same name in Ohio) and of her frequent presence at educational and reading conferences and on publisher’s and prize givers’ advisory panels– and failing all that, the miracle of her tardis-sized van - Marilyn can virtually be just that. A Book Centre in your county.

Or rather –honour-wielding governments, take note, because reading for life should mean for life – a national treasure. There were plenty in the book centre that day who would agree.