It’s hard to believe it was 25 years ago today I started the website www.tikit.net just as a bit of fun scanning in PAN book covers when the normal resolution was 640 x 480 and I went for 800 x 600, cutting edge stuff. It was the time when you seem to pay for every byte on a web server so images and text were kept to a minimum but since then things have certainly changed. I’m not saying it’s cheap but you get a lot more for your money. I can’t remember when the blog started or even what the first was called but it was followed by Blogger and then, as now, WordPress. I looked on the Internet Archive and the earliest capture was from 18th August 2002 and doesn’t look too dissimilar from now. One day it may get a makeover but I’ve been saying that for a long time, if it sort of works then don’t try to fix it.
This week we have five editions with the same number but with three different covers, namely Pan 42 ‘The Ringer’ by Edgar Wallace. It has been filmed several times including a version with Herbert Lom from 1952. It had a sequel, ‘Again the Ringer’ also published bp PAN as G567 and X441.
PAN Macmillan and Read for Good are giving away one thousand copies of ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ plus other bits and pieces to thirty one children’s ward’s around the country for those in hospital over Christmas. The staff at PAN Macmillan gift wrapped by hand copies of the 20th anniversary edition of the book and also included are festive activity packs and free access to The Gruffalo’s Child audio book and animated film, plus welcoming Gruffalo window stickers to help brighten up the hospital wards. Staff in each hospital will also receive a Christmas card thanking them for everything they do, written by illustrator Axel Scheffler and complete with a hand drawn festive Mouse or Gruffalo!
