Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

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Habitats and Ecosystems

Recommended children’s books about habitats and ecosystems

In this collection of the best children’s books about habitats and ecosystems, young readers can explore diverse landscapes and discover the intricate web of life that sustains each unique environment.

The Incredible Ecosystems of Planet Earth and The Atlas of Ocean Adventures offer exciting, beautifully illustrated journeys through diverse habitats around the world, meeting the creatures who live there and learning more about the challenges they face. Alongside a fabulous collection of non-fiction titles, this list also features chapter books to ignite the imaginations of aspiring conservationists, such as The Last Bear and The Akimbo Adventures.

Materials

Recommended children’s books about materials

This collection of children’s books about everyday materials will help young readers to learn all about the materials we use in our day-to-day lives, their properties and how we use them.

From small-scale materials in Nano to a whole house in The Mellons Build an Eco House, and from questions like Why Do We Wear Clothes? or Solid, Liquid or Gas?, these stories help children discover the huge range of materials that make up the things around them – while A Planet Full of Plastic and Rubbish? challenge young readers to consider the sustainability and environmental impact of the materials that we use every single day.

Famous Scientists

Recommended children’s books about famous scientists

Discover the inspirational lives of scientists and learn about the groundbreaking discoveries and incredible inventions that made them famous!

This list of the best children’s books about famous scientists will introduce young readers to some of the most important scientific minds in history – from Einstein in On a Beam of Light to Stephen Hawking, and from Marie Curie and her Daughters to Rosalind Franklin.

This carefully curated collection of real-life science stories will help to bring scientific history to life, and help children to see scientific advances through the eyes of those inspirational people who made them happen.

The British Book Awards

Organised by The Bookseller, The British Book Awards (also known as The Nibbies) is an annual celebration of all things books! Offering a snapshot of the book industry’s achivements and output, the Nibbies include three categories exclusively for children’s books: Children’s Fiction, Children’s Non-Fiction and Children’s Illustrated.

These awards are judged by a panel drawn from across the book industry and beyond, and we at BooksForTopics were delighted to see many of our favourites among the impressive shortlists of children’s titles.

The Children’s Fiction category includes MC Grammar’s The Adventures of Rap Kid, a BooksForTopics Book of the Month described by our Review Panel as “funny and entertaining, but also thought-provoking”. Some of our favourite characters also feature in this list, with Skandar and the Spirit War and Lottie Brooks vs the Ultra Mean Girls both shortlisted.

The Children’s Non-Fiction & Illustrated category includes our former Book of the Month My Rice is Best, which our Review Panel called “an absolute zinger of a picture book”, alongside Oh Dear, Look What I Got! from BooksForTopics favourites Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury.

You can check out the full shortlist for the 2026 British Book Awards below!

Books About Design Technology (DT) and Engineering

Best Children’s Books About Design Technology (DT) and Engineering

Inspire young readers to innovate and create with this list of the best children’s books about STEM, Design Technology and Engineering.

Curious minds will find answers to questions like What’s Technology?, How Was That Built? and How Do Bridges Work? among the featured titles, which explore the big ideas behind everything from a spacesuit to a racing car.

Books About Art and Artists

Best Children’s Books About Art and Artists

From The First Drawing to A World of Art, creativity and colour burst out of this list of the best children’s books about art and artists!

Younger children will delight in vibrant picturebooks like Luna Loves Art and Beautiful Oops!, while intrigue and adventure await older readers in Portraits and Poison and How to Steal the Mona Lisa. For fact-lovers there are fascinating life stories of artists such as Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo.

Horses and Ponies Booklist

Best Children’s Books About Horses and Ponies

Updated 2026

This list of the best children’s books about horses and ponies offers something for everyone – whether they read at a trot or a gallop!

This horses and ponies booklist showcases a range of richly illustrated picturebooks alongside fact-packed non-fiction titles. The list includes beautifully illustrated picturebooks like Hello Horse, classic children’s horse stories like Black Beauty, popular pony-themed chapter book series like Spellbound Ponies and informative non-fiction books about horses like Horses Wild and Tame.

Both shorter and longer chapter books are also included, featuring tales of adventure, courage, magic and mystery to delight young readers of all ages and abilities.

Books About Dance and Ballet

Best Children’s Books About Dance and Ballet

From ballet to ballroom and disco to street dance, this list showcases the best children’s books about dance and ballet.

Vibrant and engaging picturebooks will have younger readers dancing along to tales of movement and rhythm, while non-fiction fans will delight at stories of real-life dancers.

This dance and ballet booklist also includes a wealth of dance-themed chapter books which tackle topics like friendship, teamwork and courage alongside rehearsals, costumes and talent shows.

Throw in some aliens, witches and dancing fruit, and you’ve got the best list of children’s books about dance!

UKLA Book Awards

Judged entirely by teachers, the UKLA Book Awards are a celebration of children’s books which seeks to encourage teachers to increase their knowledge of newly published, high quality children’s books, and to promote the place of books in educational settings at all levels.

A total of 85 teachers were involved in shortlisting for the 2026 awards, and here at BooksForTopics HQ, we were delighted to see so many of our favourite titles and authors featured among the shortlists for these awards.

The Age 3-6+ category shortlist includes Emily Gravett’s Bothered by Bugs, a former BooksForTopics Book of the Month which also features in our Celebrating Science topic list. Two titles from our newly created Oracy booklists also feature in this category: Don’t Think of Tigers and Don’t Trust Fish. We also love Eoin McLaughlin’s shortlisted title Once I was a Tree, which we selected for our National Year of Reading booklist.

More of our favourites feature in the Age 7-10+ shortlist, including Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial and Padraig Kenny’s After, which both feature in our Year Group Recommended Reads. Titles from our National Year of Reading booklist are also selected in this category, including Alistair Chisholm’s Reek and J P Rose’s Birdie.

The Age 11-14+ shortlist includes Black Star, a verse novel from BooksForTopics favourite Kwame Alexander, whose books The Crossover and Booked feature among our Year Group Recommended Reads for Year 8 and Year 9. Also shortlisted is The Line They Drew Through Us, by Hiba Noor Khan, whose novel Safiyyah’s War is one of our Recommended Reads for Year 7.

Titles shortlisted in the Information Books category include Me and My Hair, a BooksForTopics Recommended Read for Year 1, and There’s No Such Thing as a Silly Question, described our reviewer as “a delightful journey through the realms of curiosity and imagination”.

You can see the full shortlists for these awards below. Find out more about the UKLA Book Awards here.