Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

Topic: Reading for Pleasure

Do Baby Elephants Suck Their Trunks?

Non-fiction

Explore the amazing ways animal babies are just like us in this enchanting non-fiction picture book There are babies everywhere! Some babies can fly and some babies can swim. Most animal babies are very different to us, but there are lots of special ways that we might be the same. Especially when we were very little . . .

With a friendly text that’s perfect for reading aloud, this book encourages children to think about what makes them unique while learning about amazing similarities they might share with babies in the animal kingdom. From giraffes wobbling as they walk to puppies losing their baby teeth, each spread is fully illustrated with heart-warming collage artwork that beautifully captures the love between parent and child. This is a very special book to share again and again.

Every Nosy Crow paperback picture book comes with a free “Stories Aloud” audio recording. Just scan the QR code and listen along.

Children of the World

Andrea Stegmaier & Nicola Edwards

Non-fiction

Discover what daily life is like for children across the world as we explore everything from food to family, and learn how to greet new friends in lots of different languages. See where it’s polite to slurp your food and bad manners to give the thumbs up, and find out where you might travel to school by cable car or sleep on an oven bed at night! A fascinating look at the lives of children across the globe.

Where Does My Food Come From?

Alex Willmore & Annabel Karmel

Non-fiction

Children often charge to the chocolate aisle, but do they know their favourite treat started out as a bean? They might lap up ketchup, but can they guess how many tomatoes it takes to fill a ketchup bottle? Young learners will discover that llamas and camels have a hand (or hoof) in cheese-making, that bees spit runny honey from their tummies into honeycomb and beat their wings to make it thicker, and how strawberries can be used to clean teeth!

Each food selected is presented through an information section, a foodie craft and two delicious recipes to get children up-close to the ingredient they’ve been learning about.

Ones to Watch – New Children’s Fiction for Spring 2022

We’ve been on a mission to dig out the best books to look forward to!

Our team has been taking a look at some of the new middle-grade titles (ages 8-12) coming up this term. We’ve picked out ten top recommendations to watch out for from January to April 2022. Why not pre-order now as a gift to your future self?

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

Alan Garner

Chapter book

This book was the first stepping point for me. I took a copy of this book to a circle of trees in Brockwell Park in London, near where I lived, and sat down on a stump and started reading. I was instantly transported to an imaginary world that I thought I had forgotten about – one filled with wizards and sleeping knights and unimaginable evil forces. Those first few mythical pages reminded me how much I loved folk tales – I loved how evil characters were invoked through nature and Grimnir smelling of “foul waters”. It reminded me of stories about creatures like Nuckelavee, Redcap, Black Annis and Jenny Greenteeth – all characters who I was desperate to in include in The Midnight Guardians, and some of which I did, but I had to be sparing!

The Dark is Rising

Susan Cooper

Chapter book

This book was instrumental for me, too – a frankly terrifying story of a boy being pulled into an ancient, mythic battle fought in the land right before us, which we cannot see but whose outcome affects us enormously. The way Cooper summons up the sense of being outside on a winter day is just perfect: special and liberating and sinister and silent all at once. The figure of The Black Rider was a huge inspiration for the character of The Midwinter King in The Midnight Guardians – in the first draft, Col was pursued not by the Lord of all Darkness, but by a sort of bounty hunter figure.

The Box of Delights

John Masefield & Quentin Blake

Chapter book

I went to see Piers Torday’s adaptation of The Box of Delights at Wilton’s Music Hall back in 2017, and it couldn’t have come at a better time for me. It reminded me exactly of the sort of thing I was trying to do in my own book: chiefly, it reminded me of the legend of Herne the Hunter, who lived and died in (and supposedly still haunts) Windsor Great Park where I grew up. I realised that a huge part of my book was about those stories I’d heard as a child about the park, and this terrifying figure of a man with antlers who some say could still be seen there. He doesn’t feature in the book – but in searching for a similar figures, I remembered The Green Man, who becomes an instrumental part of the plot and world of The Midnight Guardians.

PS: I tried to find the oak tree where Herne the Hunter supposedly hanged himself, but it’s now part of Prince Andrew’s private golf course, and the security guard patiently informed me that he would tazer me if I tried to enter.

The BFG

Quentin Blake & Roald Dahl

Chapter book

It wasn’t until I was two drafts into The Midnight Guardians that I realised I was missing something vitally important to British folklore – giants! They’re integral to our national stories, particularly English ones. The story goes that Brutus of Troy came to Britannia and fought “the descendants of Albion” – a number of giants that lived in Cornwall – fought one called Gogmagog and defeated him. I love the idea that the inhabitants of Britain used to be enormous, mean smelly giants that kept fighting each other, and gave us the rivers and mountains and stone circles that we know today. It made me think about the giant story that I was raised on – the BFG! Those giant names alone are worth the entry fee: Bloodbottler, Bonecruncher, Fleshlumpeater… In The Midnight Guardians, there are two giants called Gog and Magog, which is a reference to the two statues that were destroyed in the raid of 28th December 1940 – they’re the protectors of the City of London, and their effigies are still carried in the Lord Mayor’s Show each year.

The Complete Chronicles of Narnia

C.S. Lewis & Pauline Baynes

Chapter book

All seven tales in The Chronicles of Narnia are bound together, with full-colour illustrations, in one magnificent hardcover volume with a personal introduction by Douglas Gresham, stepson of C. S. Lewis.

Talking beasts, heroic deeds and epic battles between good and evil await you in C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy series, which has been enchanting readers for over sixty years.

This edition presents the seven books-The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle-unabridged and arranged in C.S. Lewis’s preferred order, featuring full-colour artwork by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes.

The Ice Palace

Robert Swindells

Chapter book

When Ivan’s little brother is stolen away by the terrifying Starjik, Ivan sets out into a cold, inhospitable world to bring him back. Ivan’s chances in this frozen world seem slim, and Starjik has a wild, cruel magic on his side. And yet as his adventure continues, it becomes clear that Ivan may have a friend – and a little magic – on his side too. When I was younger I read this book endlessly. It’s one of those stories you experience with your heart in your mouth, right through to the very end.