Zafor’s eyes widen as he sits down at the table, an array of silver cutlery before him, a white linen napkin standing sentinel. He takes in the grandeur of the Prince Albert Suite at London Zoo, overawed as waiters appear offering creamy bread rolls in fine baskets. “We’ve got servants,” he gasps.

Ten-year-old Zafor Uddin, in Year 6 at St George the Martyr C of E primary, a multiracial school in the London borough of Westminster, is taking part with his class in the first Foyles literary lunch for children. Foyles, which claims to be the world’s biggest bookshop, decided to make a radical departure from the monthly “luncheons” it has hosted at the Grosvenor Hotel for the past 70 years, with guest speakers ranging from Winston Churchill to Haile Selassie, Bernard Shaw to Nelson Mandela. This one would be free to Year 6 classes and their teachers from eight inner-London primary schools local to Foyles in the Charing Cross Road, rather than the usual pound;45 a head paid largely by the book-loving gentry of Knightsbridge and the shires. The special formality of the lunch would be retained but at the child-friendly zoo rather than the Grosvenor.

Instead of the usual one or two guest speakers, Foyles has invited 20 children’s authors and illustrators, including Jamila Gavin, Jacqueline Wilson, Philip Ardagh, Kaye Umansky, Stewart Ross, Pauline Fisk, Bel Mooney and Chris Riddell, each to share a table with a handful of children from the same class. The finale will be a wild and wacky poets’ cabaret with Paul Cookson and Brian Moses.

Zafor’s day starts in school, rehearsing with his friends the questions they have prepared for the authors and illustrator allotted to their three tables - Elizabeth Laird, Pauline Fisk, Pete Johnson and Chris Riddell. “When did you start to write stories?” “What advice would you give to me to become an author?” “Are any of your characters based on yourself?” And (for Pete Johnson) “Are you a Star Trek fan, because it figures a lot in your stories?”

Graham Scott, the Year 6 teacher, gives out some final words of advice. “When you ask a question, look at them, listen carefully to what they have to say, then think what else you might ask.” Then it is a crocodile march to Russell Square, past Great Ormond Street Hospital and the original St George the Martyr school in Queen Square, established for apprentice chimney-sweeps in the 19th century, and a wait for the 168 bus that takes us to Camden and a further walk along Prince Albert Road to the zoo - St George the Martyr children are resigned to walking and bussing around London to stretch the school trips budget.

But their effort is well rewarded. Sitting around a table, sharing a meal, seems the perfect setting for these young readers to relax and talk to the authors whose books they have been studying since before the summer holidays. A sausage-rolls-and-crisps buffet followed by a queue for author signings could never produce the same effect, their teachers believe.

Simon Knowles, St George the Martyr’s deputy head and literacy co-ordinator, says the sense of intimacy with the authors gives the children confidence to talk and listen. “It also makes them feel special. Not many of our children will have experienced a meal with silver service, linen napkins and waiters. We have had to help them work out which knife and fork to use first. I’ve had to keep whispering, ‘From the outside in.’

It’s just magical.”

The children are bursting with questions. Demi Watson wants to know if Elizabeth Laird has a special place to write in, and elicits an evocative response - yes, a special room with a warm stove, writing with a propelling pencil into a notebook in the morning, copying and editing on to the computer in the afternoon (after a nap). Derek Adu-sarkodie slips in the question he is particularly keen to have answered - are any of Laird’s characters based on herself? - yes, in that they come from inside. Jake (the main character in Jake’s Tower, a powerful tale of child abuse, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal this year) seemed to tell her what to write. “Now isn’t that spooky?”

She applauds the Foyles initiative. “These children have entered a world where books matter and where grown-ups are prepared to go to great lengths and expense on their behalf as readers. It enhances the status of books.”

On a nearby table Zafor is grilling Pete Johnson about his recent novel Rescuing Dad, a light but poignant exploration of marital separation. Is there a sequel, he wants to know, and will the mother and father get back together again? Where does Johnson get his ideas? “So often, children only have a chance of quick question and answer sessions from the floor with an author,” says Johnson. “This is unusual in that they have us to themselves for an hour, they can chill out over a meal and really think about what they want to say.”

Meanwhile Chris Riddell is passing round one of his sketchbooks and executing pen portraits of St George’s pupils at lightning speed, which they can keep. “One little girl next to me kept saying, ‘This is much better than school dinners’,” he says.

For St George’s, newly emerged from special measures, with good reports two terms earlier than timetabled, the Foyles lunch has come as a timely celebration. Indeed, it is thanks to Simon Knowles that the lunch took the form it did. Maggie Howell, a member of the Foyles family and an events organiser, contacted him last February; the company had been toying with the idea of a children’s literary lunch and would he be interested in selecting a group of children to attend? “I told her we would only be interested if we could take a whole class, because I would want to prepare for it as part of our literacy work. I would not have wanted to choose a special few.”

Mr Knowles took the deputy’s job last January, starting at the same time as new head Amanda Szewczyk-Radley, when the school was in the middle of special measures. Despite the difficulties, he saw it as a rich multicultural community with a “big heart”. “The pupils are the most inspiring children you can meet and we have set out to make this a lively, vibrant school,” he says. In literacy he emphasises speaking and listening, role-play and talking about books. Such practical involvement, he believes, is a way to raise boys’ achievement in particular. The approach seems to be paying off. Last summer 90 per cent of pupils reached level 4 in the key stage 2 English tests and 25 per cent achieved level 5.

The Foyles event, he says, has helped to focus the children on books. “Knowing they were going to have lunch with the authors of the books they were reading has encouraged them to fine-tune their interpretation of the text.” He says pupils have come away from the lunch inspired to write, and more knowledgeable about the process. “One child says he now really understands why redrafting is an important part of writing. Like Pete Johnson, many of the children now want to keep a notebook and have learned that you can write a big story from notes about common incidents.”

Mr Knowles admits that staff have also learned a great deal about the kinds of stories pupils respond to. “Many of the books by the authors at our lunch table were about difficult social issues. They are not books I would have chosen to read to a class. But pupils have loved them.” He is now keen to set aside time at the start of staff meetings for staff to talk about recent children’s books they have read. “It’s about developing a culture of reading, and talking about reading, for the whole school.”

CHANGE OF COURSE

The advent of the Foyles children’s lunch is just one of the many changes that have occurred at the labyrinthine book store since the death of Christina Foyle, its autocratic owner, in 1999.

When Foyles celebrates its centenary next year it will be a very different place from the business set up in 1903 by Christina’s father, William Foyle, and his brother Gilbert. The pair opened the Charing Cross Road shop in 1904, after failing their civil service exams and selling their textbooks. It has been a treasure trove for generations of book-lovers and students ever since.

Although the family has not cut off its ties with the shop - Christina’s son Christopher Foyle and nephew Bill Foyle Samuel are directors - the wind of change is blowing through the miles of shelving.

The children’s lunch, which was funded by the Foyle Foundation and supported by the National Literacy Trust and the Reading is Fundamental campaign, is part of Foyles’s new mission to “promote literacy within the community and encourage the next generation of readers”, a far cry from its former archaic reputation.

Bill Samuel says: “Given encouragement, children love to read, but if parents are not tuned into books it’s an uphill struggle to get children interested. Through the lunch we wanted to make reading special. It is the first of many children’s events.”

The Foyle Foundation gives grants to arts and educational projects including some based at schools. See www.foylefoundation.org.uk. Support for reading in schools at www.literacy trust.org.uk; www.readers.org.uk (the National Reading Campaign site, which invites nominations for school ‘reading champions’); and www.rif.org (Reading is Fundamental)