NEWS: BooksForTopics Website Relaunched!
New features added and hidden gems brought to the surface…
We are super excited to announce the relaunch of the www.booksfortopics.com website. We’ve spent large parts of the past year planning, designing, testing and improving the site and we are so excited to finish the year with a bang by sharing the new website with you!
The project has been a labour of love (yes, we really, really love reviewing books and curating the best booklists for you all). The redesign has also felt like a sizeable challenge at times, as there were already thousands of books on the old website listed on a variety of different booklist styles, as well as a host of other bookish content to consider. We’ve been working on a redesign of the whole website to create a fresher style, better-connected navigation and improved user experience for our valued visitors.
The best way to get to know the new site is to have a browse around. We’ve brought in a new design that we hope you’ll find easier to navigate in order to find the books and booklists that you are looking for. You’ll still see our popular curriculum topic booklists, year group recommended read lists, diversity booklists, printable resources and reading for pleasure recommendations, but we hope you’ll enjoy the improved ease of navigation and extra features we’ve added too.
Teachers and librarians have often told us in the past that our website is like a ‘treasure trove’. Whether it’s digging out graphic novel recommendations, discovering the printable branching out posters or spotting the ones to watch preview for next term, we love hearing about it when our website users feel like they’ve struck gold and discovered something valuable. Our hope is that the new design will bring some of the best hidden gems to the surface for you.
New Website Features to Explore
As well as transferring the hidden treasures and popular favourites from the old site, we’re pleased to introduce some handy new features too. Here are five new features of the relaunched website that we are most excited to let you know about:
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Find individual book details easily
One of the new features we think you’ll love is the introduction of book information pages. We know that our regular users love our themed booklists, and now we’ve made it super-easy to find even more information about each book selected for our lists.Simply click on any book cover image from the booklists and you will be taken to a specific book information page – like this one. There, you can find a synopsis of the book, purchasing links, comments from our review panel, age suitability, links to relevant booklists and any related resources provided by our publishing partners.
The book information pages are designed to inform your book choices by providing extra details when you are browsing our lists. -
Save your favourite booklists
Once you’ve signed in to your member account, you will be able to save your favourite books or booklists in your own Member Area. That way, you can keep track of the booklists and books that are most relevant to you, and quickly find them again when you log in.
To save a booklist in your Member Area, click on the ‘Add to Favourite’ link near the top of any booklist or book page (find the book pages by clicking on any individual book cover image on a booklist). You’ll then get a drop-down box giving options of where to save your favourites.
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Curate your own booklists
As a site member, you can add your own new categories to save and organise your favourite books. When you click ‘Add To Favourite’ on any book page, you can either select a pre-existing category (e.g. My Favourites), or create and organise your own categories by selecting ‘Add New Category’ (like ‘Science Picturebooks’ or ‘Class 2 Wishlist’).Adding your own categories gives you the option to curate your very own booklists relevant to your interests. Every time you return to your Member Area, you’ll find all of your favourites and categories in the ‘View Your Favourites’ section.
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Easily find printable resources
We often hear teachers and librarians telling us how useful the printable resources on the website are for making displays and for handing out to pupils. Now, there is a special Resources section on the website with all of our printables in one place.
There, you’ll find posters and checklists to support our Year Group Recommended Reads lists as well as
The sharp-eyed among you may have also spotted a handy new feature linked to some of the individual book pages. You may have noticed that some of the books we feature on our site have links from the book information page to downloadable resources (like this one). These are usually worksheets or teaching packs that have been provided by our publishing partners. A quick way to see which books have additional resources is to use the ‘Resource Available’ filter when you are searching for books.
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Steer to the very newest books
There you’ll find information about our Books of the Month, Ones to Watch coming up in the next term, non-fiction recommendations and special collections (like our Books of the Year award), as well as the latest books and booklists added to our site.
As a site member, you can add your own new categories to save and organise your favourite books. When you click ‘Add To Favourite’ on any book page, you can either select a pre-existing category (e.g. My Favourites), or create and organise your own categories by selecting ‘Add New Category’ (like ‘Science Picturebooks’ or ‘Class 2 Wishlist’).
If you’re enjoying the new site, please do share the link with your colleagues or drop us a message to let us know. We’d love to know your thoughts on the new design and to hear about treasures old and new that are most helpful to you.
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Where next?
- Visit our Reading for Pleasure Hub
- Browse our Topic Booklists
- View our Year Group Recommended Read Booklists.
- See our Books of the Month.
