‘Pretty aint it … Mrs Yonge said so’: the changing face of teaching poetry

An exhibition in Cambridge shows how poems have been taught to GCSE students down the decades – with pupils’ own textbook annotations included

Stonewall defends ‘vital’ LGBT children’s books after spate of ban attempts

In the last week, separate moves in Canada and the US threatened to restrict young readers’ access to LGBT-themed illustrated stories

The Guardian view on academic freedom: the right to be very wrong

Editorial: Sometimes it takes a true believer to make clear the absurdities of a faith. An Oxford professor’s view on sexuality discredit his church’s doctrine

The vandals destroying libraries should have the book thrown at them

A great public service is being run down by a state that prefers cost-cutting to culture

David Kynaston: ‘There is an anti-privilege mood. It is hard to see private schools escaping unscathed’

The social historian on why he believes Britain may finally tackle the inequality perpetuated by independent education

Casey Gerald: ‘Trump may be the most American president we’ve ever had’

From a traumatic childhood in Dallas to Yale, Harvard, Wall Street and beyond, the businessman and author exemplifies the American dream – the very myth his new book sets out to dismantle

Peter Jarvis obituary

Other lives: Emeritus professor of continuing education at the University of Surrey

Valerie Eaton Griffith obituary

Founder of a voluntary scheme that established a path to recovery for stroke patients

How we made Horrible Histories

‘If someone getting wee poured over them helps people learn some facts, we’re doing our job right’

Humiliation, homoeroticism and animal cruelty: inside the frathouse

Photographer Andrew Moisey uncovered ritual hazing, extreme drunkenness and toxic masculinity on one college campus – from men destined to be America’s future leaders

P is for pterodactyl, T is for tsunami: the ‘worst alphabet book’ becomes a bestseller

A picture book dedicated to English’s strangest quirks has made the New York Times bestseller list with the publisher scrambling to reprint. How did the rapper behind it dream it up?

Dear Damian Hinds, please stop wrecking poetry for children

Children are being taught that there are right and wrong answers in poems

‘Toxic’ beats ‘gammon’ and ‘cakeism’ to win Oxford Dictionaries’ word of 2018

Toxic best captures ‘the ethos, mood and preoccupations’ of the year, according to the dictionary

Morris Gleitzman, beloved children’s author, meets his new editors – children

‘It’s hard to select the stories because all of them are so good,’ says a primary student editor of Early Harvest magazine

From Madonna’s Sex to Lady Chatterley: inside the Bodleian’s explicit book club

Created at the height of Victorian prudishness, the Bodleian Library’s Phi collection was designed to protect young minds from ‘immoral’ books. More than a century later, they’re going on display for the first time