VISITORS from the Isle of Man joined pupils from a Burnley school on a visit to find out how our newspaper is produced.

Ramsey Grammar School has been taking part in annual exchange visits with Primrose Hill Special School in Burnley, for the past 14 years. This year they included a trip to our head office in Blackburn, printing plant near Bolton and a look around Bolton Wanderers Reebok Stadium.

Pupils and staff from both schools are pictured with sub-editor Eric Beardsworth showing how pages are designed on screen.

Not a lot of people know that!

NIE co-ordinator RITA SHAW reviews three of the books given as prizes to winners of our competition to mark World Book Day:

THE WORLD IN ONE DAY - INCREDIBLE COMPARISONS FROM A SINGLE DAY, by Russell Ash, (Dorling Kindersley, £12.99)

PICTURE the scene - you've just met that super-special boy or girl and need to make an immediate impression by stunning him or her with your scintillating conversation.

So what can you say? Well how about, "Did you know that lightening strikes somewhere on Earth 100 times a second," or "In the western world, everyone uses around 30 gallons of water every day just to flush the loo." Stunning or what? But seriously, this book really is stuffed full of fascinating facts, cleverly illustrated in large format to make you want to find out about the world's worst traffic jam, or how many letters are posted every day, or how much skin is shed by the people of the world in one day. You see - you really would like to know!

The answers to these three perplexing posers are: between Parish and Lyons, France, stretching for 109 miles in 1980; 1.2 billion letters; enough skin to fill a four-storey house. But for all the hundreds of other got-to-know facts, you will have to read the book.

POCKETS - ENGLISH DICTIONARY, £3.99 and POCKETS - ENCYCLOPAEDIA, by John Farndon, £9.99. (Dorling Kindersley)

IF your youngster is short on space but would like to be big on knowledge, then these two books are indispensable to your bookshelf.

Part of the publisher's "Pocket" series, they are compact, clear and easy to use. The encyclopaedia is packed with attractive colour illustrations alongside up-to-date facts on a huge range of subjects. More than 50,000 entries are clearly defined in the English Dictionary, including up-to-the-minute words and phrases. At a price of under £14 for both books, no home or homework doer should be without them.

OUR FAVOURITE STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD, by Jamila Gavin, photographs by Barnabas Kindersley, illustrations by Amanda Hall (Dorling Kindersley) £8.99.

WHAT better way to celebrate World Book Day than by telling of traditional stories from around the world. These are, after all, the forerunners of the printed word.

Ten real children, photographed in their own localities, each introduce a favourite story from their country.

The author, who was born in India, retells the tales of a modern audience while retaining the intimate details of place and culture which bring the stories to life.

The immediate impact of the book however, is in the dramatic colour illustrations and fascinating photographs of real places and things mentioned in the tales. This is a book to treasure, full of stories underlining the essential truths of life.

Story Search visitors

SCHOOLS who use our Story Search reading scheme are invited to make visits to our head office and printing plant free of charge.

Two schools who accepted our offer of visits are Roughlee CE Primary School, and Sudell County Primary School, Darwen.

Our Newspapers in Education project aims to give pupils and teachers a better understanding of business and industry and, in particular, of the newspaper industry. For more information on any aspect of the scheme, please contact Rita Shaw, NIE co-ordinator, Lancashire Evening Telegraph, High Street, Blackburn BB1 1HT.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.