Adventure, fun and just a touch of nonsense Browsing through a second-hand bookshop recently I noticed a series of books called, uninspiringly, The Grey Books for Children. At the end of the row was a huge thick book entitled The Bumper Grey Book for Children 1932. Underneath the title it stated proudly 'Full of adventure, fun and nonsense.'

The book recommended its pages to 11 year olds and that set me thinking about our present Year 7 pupils. Would they find this book interesting in 2008?

The only colour picture depicted a boy of the right age in a grey flannel suit, grey shirt and school tie. His school cap at an angle on his thatch of hair gave him a jaunty look, as did the broad grin on his shiny, polished face.

He was assisting what looked like two American chiefs in full dress to paddle an improbably fancy canoe towards some rapids in the wilds of somewhere - wild!

Obviously this came under the nonsense section. The book itself had very small print, illustrations and diagrams. 'How to make a working model of Tower Bridge' and the 'Empire State Building in paper clips' caught my attention as I flicked through.

To read it all would take the average 11 year old until he was 21, because the pages divided into relentless columns of information like newsprint.

I was amazed to notice that several articles had the same title: 'A Journey of a Lifetime.' 'Overland to Abyssinia' retold the exploits of two Oxford students who travelled across Europe to Turkey then down through Palestine into Egypt and the Sudan and so to Abyssinia.

How long these students took off from their studies it didn't say. They had no end of adventures and loads of fun and nonsense as well, I don't doubt.

Could this story prove sufficiently exciting for children today, to brave permanent eye damage from the small print and black and white photographs? I think not! It could not compete with a PSP for adventure, fun and nonsense.

I concluded that The Bumper Grey Book for Children was, on the whole, more inclined to nonsense than anything else.

It gave children an idea that the world was a wonderfully benign place full of safe adventures, and smiling friendly people referred to as 'natives' who thought it the highest honour imaginable to shake hands with two Englishmen and have their photographs taken.

Not only does this now seem like nonsense but surely it is also politically incorrect and would cause an outrage if published today!

One of the tasks of our schools must be to provide the right mixture of adventure, fun and nonsense, but I am sure we can do better than The Grey Books for Children!

Damian Ettinger, Headmaster, Cokethorpe School