PARENTS, teachers and librarians play a key role in encouraging children to read and so does Ireland's book industry. All these efforts find expression in the Children's Book Festival which starts this Thursday, October 18th, and runs to November 3rd.

The festival's big message is "go to your public libarary and/or bookshop to find out what's going on," says festival co ordinator Rosemary Hetherington.

During the week there will be author visits, competitions, all sorts of activities and, as always, it's tied into the MS Readathon, so your children will be tuned in to thinking "books" in school.

The dramatic growth in children's book publishing ill Ireland has helped encourage children to read, say the children's book experts, because it means there is a book to appeal to nearly every child's taste.

School librarian Marilyn Taylor, who's third book Call Yourself A Friend? (O'Brien Press, price £3.99) has just been published, decided there was a gap in the market for books about Irish teenagers when she saw pupils addicted to the American imports - and has won both critical and commercial success.

Nearly every child in the country knows about Marita Conlon McKenna's Under the Hawthorn Tree series, and Tom McCaughren's fox books. There's thoughtful, well written teen fiction by people like Margrit Cruickshank, Jane Mitchell, June Considine, Rose Doyle and (of particular interest to boys) Peter Regan.

If you are a baffled parent/ granny/uncle/aunt/godfather and don't know where to start looking, The Big Guide To Irish Children's Books, edited by Valerie Coghlan and Celia Keenan (Irish Children's Book Trust, price £5.99, in books hops now) is a good place to start. More than just a list, it has a series of thought provoking essays on all kinds of books for children.

Also available, free in bookshops and libraries, is the Children's Book Festival reading list 1996-1997, which has a very comprehensive guide to the best children's books, both Irish and non Irish.