Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

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Curriculum Topic Booklists

curriculum topic booklists

Booklists Sorted by Topic

Browse our lists of recommended books and quality texts for topics on the primary curriculum. Whether you are looking for Romans books and rainforest topic texts to stories about growing plants and children’s books about the body, we’ve got reading lists of the best children’s books to support pupils learning about curriculum subjects through the primary school years.

We’ve done the curriculum research and book scouting for you, working with a review panel that tests books out in schools and classrooms for us.

From books for children about the Vikings and Victorians to topic books about Great Fires and Ancient Greeks, we’ve got oodles of book recommendations to support your topic. Whether you need books for a mountains topic and texts about rivers or you’re planning an imaginary class trip and need children’s books about Africa or stories about the USA, our booklists are here to help to bring your learning adventures alive with the best books for primary topics.

Browse our curriculum booklists by subject area below to find your next topic books.

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.

Many of the lists have been matched to relevant the 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.

Looking for a topic that is not listed here? Then let us know!

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 primary 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 to select the more 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:

Can schools use these booklists as a resource to share with their wider communities?

We love to see our booklists being used by schools and libraries across the country and it really helps us to spread the word about our website when you share links with your community.  While you can’t copy and paste content directly from our website without permission, there are a number of ways you can share our helpful resources with your school community including by sharing direct links:

  • Share direct links to the BooksForTopics website or to particular booklists on your school website or social media.
  • Share a link to relevant curriculum topic booklists on your class newsletter, topic web or knowledge organiser.
  • Share our printable resources with your school community, like our Recommended Read checklists or Christmas gift guides.
  • Display our posters in your classrooms or school library, like our popular Branching Out posters or Recommended Read year group posters (we love to see your photos when you do!). Some schools hand copies out to parents, too.
  • Include links to our website in an email or newsletter to your school community.

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

Buy our book packs for Peters and SAVE 20%

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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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