Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

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About BooksForTopics

BooksForTopics is a website featuring children's booklists sorted by age or topic.

booksfortopics website

The BooksForTopics website was first launched as a means of helping primary school staff to find the best books to use in classrooms.

The booklists on the site now help millions of users each year to find recommended children’s books, including booklists for primary curriculum subjects like history and science, recommendations of the best new children’s books, specific booklists for reading for pleasure like graphic novels and early chapter books and recommendations of the best books by age or year group.

More About the BooksForTopics Website

The BooksForTopics site began as a group of booklists that collated quality texts themed around popular topics for EYFSKS1 and KS2. As a primary teacher, our founder Alison began to create the lists by drawing on her own experience of quality texts and by discussing recommendations with teaching colleagues from across the country. The site quickly grew in popularity, with teachers commenting that it was useful to have a go-to place to search for appropriate books that are tried and tested for use in the classroom.

Over time, the number of Topic Lists increased and the site also began to focus on Reading for Pleasure, with booklists added for each year group and a Reading for Pleasure Blog featuring the latest children’s fiction. The site is incredibly privileged to have contributions from a fantastic community of people including teachers, librarians, education lecturers and children’s authors. With a panel of 50 reviewers from across the primary education community, we are now able to try out new books in a variety of school settings before we recommend them on the website, making sure that we are only recommending the most suitable books for your classrooms. We are delighted that our recommendations have now reached millions of users, with thousands of schools accessing the booklists each month and a growing audience of families looking for recommendations for books at home.

Over the past few years, BooksForTopics has grown in its ability to support primary teachers and librarians in finding the best books to use with pupils, as well as inspiring teachers in their own reading journeys and reaching more families at home. This is a golden age for children’s literature and it is not always easy to keep up to date with the wonderful texts that are available, but we are here to make it a little easier to know where to start.

Our booklists are different to many traditional school reading lists and reading spines because they are part of a digital resource that is evolving all the time. Librarians tell us that teachers using printed reading lists are sometimes unaware of many newer quality titles because the lists become quickly dated after a few years. Here at BooksForTopics we are constantly updating and evaluating our lists, which means that they are always up to date with new titles. In addition to our school review panel, we work with a range of publishers, children’s book industry experts and booksellers to make sure our lists offer the very best recommendations. We also work in partnership with Peters, who supply packs of books from our lists directly to schools.

To keep in touch with the latest news and reviews from BooksForTopics, please join the thousands of other teachers who have signed up to our mailing list, or follow us on FacebookTwitter or Instagram.

More about Alison Leach

Director of BooksForTopics

Alison is a trained primary teacher with experience of teaching across KS1 and KS2 and leading English. Alison completed a Master of Education in Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature at the University of Cambridge, during which time she was awarded the Jacqueline Wilson Award in Children’s Literature Research. In addition to Alison’s teaching experience, she has also previously worked on commissioned primary school reading resources for a range of educational companies, including Pearson and Scholastic. Alison has also led Reading for Pleasure CPD sessions for primary schools, hosted conference workshops and partnered with the Open University and UKLA to deliver teacher training sessions, as well as working with schools on consultancy projects and bespoke booklists. She particular enjoys being part of the judging panel for Children’s Book Awards, including the Laugh Out Loud Book Awards (Lollies) and the Diverse Book Awards.

Alison has a passion for children’s literature that is matched only by her love of coffee. For Alison, the best part of running the BooksForTopics website is hearing how the book recommendations on the site have positively impacted reading for pleasure in schools and widened teachers’ knowledge of children’s books. Alison enjoys being able to spend so much time reading children’s books and working with the BooksforTopics Review Panel to finalise selections for our booklists. Her all-time favourite children’s book is The Tiger Who Came to Tea and her top recommendation from more recent years is The House with Chicken Legs by Sophie Anderson.

For PR requests or media enquiries, please contact [email protected].

Alison Leach, Director of BooksForTopics

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Your Review

Stone Girl Bone Girl

review

Year group(s) the book is most suitable for:

Year group(s) the book is most suitable for:

Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?

Does the book contain anything that teachers would wish to know about before recommending in class (strong language, sensitive topics etc.)?

Would you recommend the book for use in primary schools?

yes

Curriculum links (if relevant)

Curriculum links (if relevant)

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