It’s easy to feel lost in the flood of so many new children’s books available. Each month, we pick five of our recently published favourites.
Check out our Review Panel’s top picks for you to read in December 2022.
It’s easy to feel lost in the flood of so many new children’s books available. Each month, we pick five of our recently published favourites.
Check out our Review Panel’s top picks for you to read in December 2022.
It’s easy to feel lost in the flood of so many new children’s books available. Each month, we pick five of our recently published favourites.
Check out our Review Panel’s top picks for you to read in November 2022.
We love to hear which books are most popular among our community of primary teachers, TAs, librarians, authors and children’s book lovers.
Our Review Panel searched for the top children’s books published in the last year. We looked for the best classroom read-alouds, the most popular books with children and the best books to support the school curriculum.
Browse the SHORTLISTED books in each category below – perfect for topping up your library with the best new children’s books from the past year!
Members of the BooksForTopics website were invited to vote for their favourites to find the winners of the Books of the Year 2024.
All Sam wants is a family of his own, a home instead of a ‘house’ and parents he knows will still be there when he wakes up. Because Sam has been in and out of foster care his whole life and he can’t imagine ever feeling like he truly belongs.
Then his best friend Leah suggests that rather than wait for a family to come to him, he should go out and find one. So begins The Perfect Parent Project … But Sam may just discover that family has a funny way of finding you.
This is the first in a series of books that are real gems for children who are ready for a short chapter book but may still feel overwhelmed by too much text on a page.
Centred around an unlikely friendship between two animals, the stories are laugh-out-loud adventures with appealing illustrations that perfectly break up the text to suit the reading stamina of this age range.
This first adventure begins to focus on small-scale conflict resolution with the perfect dose of silliness (and toilet humour) to keep young readers entertained throughout.
It’s easy to feel lost in the flood of so many new children’s books available. Each month, we pick five of our recently published favourites.
Check out our Review Panel’s top picks for you to read in October 2022.
Children’s films and books are full of nature’s duos: now it is time to learn about how pairs of animals and animal-plant combinations work together for mutual gain and survival in the real world.
Each double-page spread in this fascinating non-fiction book gives information about a different relationship. The reader learns how each member of the pair acts to benefit the other. For example: did you know that, in Columbia, there is a frog that babysits the eggs of a tarantula – stopping them from being eaten by ants – in return for being protected from predators such as snakes?
In addition to the main relationship, the reader is presented with plenty of interesting and delightful facts about each of the animals or plants themselves. Did you know that a skink lizard can make its tail fall off and grow again if it gets trapped? AND, sometimes, there is enough tail left over that the skink actually ends up with two tails!
The book covers a wide range of biomes and habitats: even the human scalp! All of the pages are beautifully illustrated to capture the reader’s imagination and make them want to discover more about the natural world. This book would be a welcome addition to any Key Stage Two non-fiction collection and could also be used as inspiration for fiction writing.
This is a fun superhero-themed story book that helps to get younger children counting. When Pasta Man’s supply of Pasta Power runs out, he needs all of the help he can get to outsmart the spicy supervillainess Madame Chilli.
We love Caryl Hart’s tongue-twisting rhymes and Nick East’s lively illustrations, capturing the cast of imaginative superhero characters in this unique counting book.
Join ‘The After School Detective Club’ on their first adventure in the sleepy seaside town of Southwold. Consisting of Lucy, Max, Charlie and her canine companion, Sherlock, the group of children become friends one dark, wet evening when Sherlock decides to pick a fight with a mysterious stranger who appears to be signalling from some large rocks to ships at sea.
This is an exciting, fast-paced adventure story with plenty of action. The illustrations, by Ben Mantle, are liberally sprinkled throughout the text and beautifully illustrate it. Reminiscent of both Fleur Hitchcock and Enid Blyton, this series promises to be one to watch. A must-read for anyone who loves a good adventure story, this would make a great class read as there are plenty of end-of-chapter cliffhangers.
Justin’s own pirate themed series, Vampirates, was first published in 2005 and became instant international bestsellers. Now given a new drop of life by UCLan Publishing, with new content, artwork and a fresh sensitivity read, this white-knuckle series is brought to a new generation of young readers.
Vampirates starts with twins Grace and Connor who become separated at sea and are rescued by two very different ships. But where Connor finds himself in the hands of pirates eager to train a new recruit, Grace finds herself aboard a ship with a very unusual crew, who are waiting for the sun to set before deciding her fate…
Free and downloadable resources for schools are also available on the author’s website.
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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