Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

Topic: History

Historical Fiction for KS2

Recommended Historical Fiction for Children Aged 7-11 (KS2)

A guide curated by the experts at BooksForTopics.

Bring the past to life with this hand-picked selection of the best historical fiction for children in Key Stage 2! This book list is a portal to different places and times – from stories set in Ancient Greece to Viking books for children and from colonial stories to wartime fiction.

Award-winning historical fiction writer Ally Sherrick features strongly in this list, with books including gunpowder plot-inspired Black Powder, and time-hopping adventure The Buried Crown. Often hailed as the “Queen of Historical Fiction,” Emma Carroll’s writing is also well-represented, with tales including the excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb in Secrets of a Sun King, and the birth of hot air balloon flight in Sky Chasers. Several of Tom Palmer’s trademark super-readable yet compelling stories also feature, including Over the Line, which weaves football into the First World War, and After the War, inspired by the true story of the “Windermere Boys”.

The breadth of historical periods covered in this expertly curated booklist covers the Bronze Age in The Boy with the Bronze Axe through to the Middle Ages in The Great Phoenix of London, and from 18th-century colonialism in Journey Back to Freedom to the Second World War in Shrapnel Boys.

Featuring bold characters, epic journeys and thrilling adventures, these titles will deepen historical understanding while inspiring curiosity and compassion.

KS3 History Reading List

Recommended Books to Support History at KS3

If you are looking for recommended books to support secondary History in Years 7, 8 and 9, this BooksForTopics expertly curated booklist is here to help!

This Key Stage 3 history reading list features a huge range of themes and formats, including well-known true-life stories like The Diary of a Young Girl, fiction that crosses historical time zones like The Buried Crown, and discussion-starting non-fiction gems like Normal Women.

Among the featured titles, there’s poetry in Poems from the Second World War, mythology in Norse Myths, and a picture book account of a real-life escape from an Auschwitz convoy in One Day. The non-fiction picks include the visually stunning Medicine and an illustrated edition of Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads, which offers a truly original history of the world. There’s also a host of exciting historical fiction, including the Elizabethan-era adventure Cue for Treason, Benjamin Zephaniah’s powerful real-life inspired Windrush Child, and Jasbinder Bilan’s gripping Victorian mystery, Nush and the Stolen Emerald.

With something for all budding historians, the titles on this booklist will bring topics from across KS3 history to life.

History of Flight Topic

Best Children’s Books about the History of Flight and Flying Machines

The exciting, courageous and innovative history of flight is brought to life in this selection of fiction and non-fiction texts for children. This hand-picked list of the best children’s books about the history of flight features fascinating life stories of flight pioneers like Amelia Earhart and the Wright Brothers, alongside beautifully illustrated histories of flying machines such as Aviation and Planes.

Fly up, up and away with this list of the best primary school books about flight and flying machines!

You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Victorian Schoolchild!

David Antram & John Malam

Non-fiction

Cruel school and wicked punishments await in this hilarious look at Victorian school days!

Growing up in Britain in the 1880s wasn’t easy. The going was tough and the punishments were even tougher. Follow the experiences of Victorian schoolchildren and discover their top tips on how to survive at school. This perfect curriculum companion uses humorous cartoon-style illustrations to bring Victorian characters to life, while informative captions, timelines and maps explain processes or chronological events. Suddenly modern-day school doesn’t seem quite so bad, as readers learn that they really wouldn’t want to be a Victorian schoolchild!

The ever-popular You Wouldn’t Want to Be series transports readers to the grisliest times and places in history, perfect for reluctant readers. The first-person narrative approach puts children in the shoes of some of the most unfortunate people ever to have lived.

Suffragettes and Women’s Suffrage

Recommended Children’s Books About Suffragettes and Women’s Suffrage

Explore the history of women’s right to vote with this list of children’s books about suffragettes and women’s suffrage. Featuring everything from time-travelling historical fiction to real-life accounts of the key figures in women’s fight for the vote, this women’s suffrage children’s booklist offers young readers an exciting introduction to the KS2 topic.

Hercules

David O’Connell & Tom Vaughan

Chapter book

A diary-style book that merges modern life with Greek mythology.

Hercules Braver is desperate to live up to his name and sees starting high school as the perfect opportunity to assert both himself and his two friends, Pav and Hatty, as the coolest new kids in school.

Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan, but just when things look like they couldn’t get any worse, a miracle occurs – Hercules’ birth dad shows up. He doesn’t just look like a Greek god; it turns out that he is a Greek God. On the plus side, he can grant wishes and make Hercules the coolest kid in town.

A funny, laugh-out-loud book which will appeal to fans of Wimpy Kid as well as those with an interest in Greek mythology. Easy-to-read text with illustrations by David O’Connell.

Kings and Queens Topic Booklist

Best Books for the Kings & Queens Topic

From picturebooks about The King’s Pants to comprehensive fact books like Kings and Queens: Alfred the Great to King Charles III and Everyone In-Between!, we’ve picked out some of our favourite texts suitable for primary school children to help explore the Kings and Queens topic.

The Slave Trade

Recommended Children’s Books About The Slave Trade

Our list of the best children’s books about the slave trade is an essential guide to educating children about slavery in history in an age-appropriate way.

Children can discover stories of how Harriet Tubman helped to free hundreds of slaves in Trailblazers: Harriet Tubman, or how Mary Prince escaped slavery to become a key figure in the abolitionist movement in Mary Prince. Younger readers can join Paloma as she discovers her family’s history in Our Story Starts in Africa.

Rich with memoirs and tales of bravery and extraordinary journeys as well as exploring the wider themes of racism and exploitation, this varied selection of titles aims to illuminate the important topic of slavery in a way that children can engage and relate with.

Explorers and Exploration

Best children’s books about explorers and exploration

Join swashbuckling adventurers and brave pioneers in this list of the best children’s books about explorers and exploration. A journey through this handpicked selection of the best children’s books for an exploration topic is sure to inspire young readers to seek out new horizons!

Discover the fascinating world of legendary explorers in The Indestructible Tom Crean and Everest: The Remarkable Story of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. These tales get right to the heart of the explorer topic, championing courage and resilience while showcasing the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity.

For those eager to chart their own course of discovery, the Atlas of Great Journeys offers a lavishly illustrated, fact-packed tour of the world’s greatest journey, which can be enhanced with a unique augmented reality feature.

Our carefully curated list of children’s books celebrates the spirit of exploration and fosters a love for learning about the world’s unreached places. Discover the history of exploration and instil a sense of adventure in the hearts of young explorers, as they embark on a voyage of knowledge and imagination with this carefully selected list of children’s books all about explorers.

Honesty and Lies

Eloise Williams

Chapter book

Set in 1601 at the end of the Tudor period, this story is written from two points of view to cover both Honesty’s and Alice’s perspectives, which gives the reader the added advantage of knowing what the other character does not. The tension of the court and the danger for girls in that day and age is ever-present and the reader is completely immersed in Elizabethan life and can imagine it all, complete with smells and severed heads. In fact, it is that very detail that makes this book such an immersive read. You feel Honesty’s revulsion at the washing process, the biting cold, the contrast between rich and poor.

Whilst Queen Elizabeth I makes a brief appearance, this is not about royalty, but rather those nameless individuals who lived and died without recognition to keep the Court going and the ordinary people, who lived in grinding poverty which we cannot begin to imagine, right in the same building as the richest and most powerful people in the land.

Best Books by Age

Popular Children's Authors

Topic: History

Recommended Historical Fiction for Children Aged 7-11 (KS2)

Recommended Books to Support History at KS3

Best Children’s Books about the History of Flight and Flying Machines

Recommended Children’s Books About Suffragettes and Women’s Suffrage

Recommended Children’s Books About The Slave Trade

Best children’s books about explorers and exploration

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