Creativity is a prominent feature in Trentham’s list this year. Anna Craft, Teresa Cremin and Pam Burnard bring an international perspective to Creativity 3-11. Catherine McGill, Terri N’Guessin and Marion Rosen describe how developing creativity through partnerships in two primary schools in a disadvantaged area dramatically raised standards in the schools. Pat Cochrane and Mike Cockett explore Building a Creative School, and Peggy Vong offers us a vivid picture of creativity in Chinese classrooms.

In these troubled times, Angela Gluck Wood answers the crucial question What Do We Tell the Children? Hilary Claire and Cathie Holden offer a timely book on teaching about controversial issues, the first for 20 years to tackle this pressing issue. It’s also 20 years since Kate Myers compiled Genderwatch and she leads on the wholly new Genderwatch...still watching – needed just as much today.

Coinciding with the UN’s report on the subject, a disturbing and important book on Gender Violence in and around Schools heads our list on gender issues. There’s also Helen Bowen’s account of women’s resistance to domestic violence, and Venitha Pillay’s fascinating study of Academic Mothers. Barry van Driel and Lutz van Dijk’s important collection Challenging Homophobia has warranted a foreword by Desmond Tutu.

Iram Siraj-Blatchford regularly enriches Trentham’s list. In The Team around the Child she offers support for the thousands of Children’s Centres to be set up this year. Another ‘regular’, Jean Conteh co-edits Multilingual Learning – stories from schools and communities in Britain; and Chris Gaine is one of the four editors of Social Justice and Intercultural Education.

Our unique and valued list of books on social inclusion and justice features Maurice Coles’ Every Muslim Child Matters and also two important books on new migrants. We have a new collection on Teaching Traveller Children, plus John Coxhead’s remarkable study which argues that Travellers are The Last Bastion of Racism and shows what can be done to challenge this, and therefore other, forms of prejudice. Gloria Gordon’s Towards Bicultural Competence is an astonishing study of how she – and now others – can overcome the forces that hold down black people in the west.

Stephen Gorard and fellow researchers enhance our burgeoning HE list with the significant report on Overcoming the Barriers to Higher Education. And Geraldine Price and Janet Skinner’s manual for supporting learning differences in HE will be invaluable for tutors and students. The media loves problematising children and schools but in his review of state schools since the 1950s, Adrian Elliott shows otherwise. And if every primary teacher and manager, and our policy makers, were to take account of Jackie Ravet’s hugely significant book Are We Listening? then primary school children would not be turned off education.

All new titles conform to our ethical stance and our commitment to equality, academic rigour and readability. Our thanks to all our authors and to you, our readers.