Curriculum Topic Booklists

Guidance: Curriculum Topic Booklists 

What are the topic booklists for?

The BooksForTopics curriculum topic booklists are curated selections of the best books to support learning about specific topics.

The booklists on the BooksForTopics website mostly feature books suitable for the primary school age range (4-11). Many of our booklists are based on topics found in the primary school curriculum, like the Romans in history or growing plants in science. All of the booklists contain a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, with picturebooks, graphic novels and poetry appearing on most lists too.

We have also added a small selection of KS3 booklists for reading around curriculum subjects in lower secondary school (ages 11-14).

Many of the lists have been matched to the relevant age group where the topic appears in a specific key stage on the curriculum. For example, the National Curriculum states that in history, children in KS2 should learn about changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, so our Stone Age topic booklist has been curated with Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11) in mind. Meanwhile, KS1 children are required to learn about significant events beyond living memory, like the Great Fire of London – and so our Fire of London booklist is aimed at Key Stage 1 (ages 5-7). We also have a selection of EYFS topic lists to cater for the Early Years curriculum.  Most of the curriculum lists have key stage or year group tags near the top of the page to help you to identify age group suitability.

Teachers and school leaders widely use the BooksForTopics booklists to help plan their curriculum coverage, but we often hear how parents also find our lists very helpful to find books to support children’s learning or to match special interests.

How are the books on the lists chosen?

We love children’s books at BooksForTopics HQ and one of our favourite parts of running the website is finding the best books to recommend on our booklists, whether it’s for curriculum topic booklists, year group booklists or reading for pleasure recommendations.

Each of our curriculum topic booklists contains a carefully curated selection of books to support the teaching of the curriculum. When assessing the quality of books to consider them for our website, we consider a number of factors – including age suitability, quality of text, visual appeal, readability, level of interest for children, underlying values, curriculum relevance and print production quality. Our thorough analysis of the primary curriculum helps us select the most relevant books for schools teaching various topics.

Our review panel of teachers and education experts provides information about which books support the curriculum effectively, as well as writing detailed reviews for some of the books that we feature, too. In addition to our Review Panel feedback and curriculum analysis, we work with a team of booksellers to make sure that the books on our lists are readily available from publishers in order to supply them to schools and classrooms. Schools can buy full packs of most of our topic booklists directly from Peters.

How are the different curriculum topics grouped?

We have broadly grouped our topic booklists by subject area. Here are the quick links:

• History Topic Booklists
• Geography Topic Booklists
• Science, Maths & Computing Topic Booklists
• Literacy & Reading Booklists
• Arts & Sports Topic Booklists
• EYFS Topic Booklists
• PSHE Topic Booklists

Where can teachers and parents purchase the books on the BooksForTopics booklists?

• Buy the individual books on these lists from the individual links to Amazon next to each book.

• Purchase individual titles from these booklists via the BooksForTopics store on BookShop.Org.

• To buy the full book packs of our curriculum lists, schools can purchase via Peters.