There is no shortage of surveys on children's and young adults' leisure time reading interests, stretching as far back as 1888 in Great Britain and 1897 in the United States. The most comprehensive research undertaken in Great Britain was a study conducted by the Schools Council, published by Macmillan in 1975 as "Children and Their Books." The study sought to discover the extent, kind, and degree of satisfaction of children's voluntary reading, as well as the environmental factors influencing their choices. More recently, a study of 473 Northern Ireland children was conducted, along the same lines as the Schools Council's study. The subjects were aged 11 through 13 years. The survey indicated that, at the 11-year-old range, girls read more books per month than boys, but no significant difference was found between the two sexes for ages 12 and 13. The age difference showed a progressive increase in nonreaders and a corresponding decrease in heavy readers in both sexes. Girls gave more time to reading than did boys. Children's nonquality fiction was read most often by 11- and 12-year-olds, and adult nonquality by 13-year-olds. The subjects were also asked what advice they would give to an author writing for their age group, and their replies, in order of priority, indicated preferences for excitement, adventure, reality, mystery, and humor. Violence and historical fiction were ranked very low. (HTH)