TThe International Incidence of Childhood Cancer series was established with the publication of the first volume in 1988 as IARC Scientific Publication No. 87 . This initiative was motivated by the impossibility of appropriately presenting the data on cancer in children within the Cancer Incidence in Five Continents (CI5) series:
- Although childhood cancers are embedded within the tables of CI5, they are not presented according to the histology groups most relevant for the childhood age range.
- CI5 publishes data for 5-year calendar periods; hence, some registries could not provide representative rates for the tumours in children, due to their rarity (causing unstable incidence rates).
- By ddefinition, the paediatric cancer registries, some of them covering large populations not covered by the general cancer registries for all ages, do not participate in the CI5 series.
Volume 1 (IICC-1)  targeted the 1970s. The tumours were classified according to the novel uniform classification of childhood cancers  based on histology coded to ICD-O-1  and slightly adapted to international data . The tables used were adapted from those used in CI5. Non-population-based cancer registries were included from those world regions with a lack of population-based cancer data. This volume was followed by the publication of a series of papers on international incidence of the main groups of childhood neoplasms [15, 17-18, 22-27].
Volume 2 (IICC-2)  included data from 15 new countries, while some of those included in IICC-1 did not appear in IICC-2. A few non-population-based registries were still included. Tumours were classified according to the International Classification of Childhood Cancer , based on ICD-O-2 . To verify and classify cancer records centrally, the specific software CHILD-CHECK was developed. It was then distributed to the cancer registries with the accompanying technical report . Data were presented in several types of tables, notably those for both sexes combined and national tables, pooling data from multiple registries in countries with several regional cancer registries of good quality.