Books for Topics

1. Curriculum Topic Lists.
 I think of our topic booklists as the ‘bread-and-butter’ of the BooksForTopics website. When the new National Curriculum came into action back in 2014, a frantic scramble took place among primary teachers to find children’s books to support some of the new topic additions. Do you know any books about the Stone Age? teachers would frequently ask. At the time only one or two were recommendable, but fortunately since then publishers have caught up with the demand and now we are able to share a whole list of them. If your child is interested in the Ancient Egyptians, we have a list for that too. From plants and oceans to Ancient Greece and Black History, try browsing the topic lists or running a search on the website to find books linked to your topics of interest.

2. Year Group Recommendations
 Another popular resource is our Year Group Recommendation lists. Teachers and parents often ask for age-specific recommendations - as sometimes book covers and blurbs can be deceiving when it comes to making an assessment of age suitability. The books that we feature are selected by a panel of expert reviewers, from teachers and headteachers to primary education lecturers and librarians, to make sure our recommendations have been screened for both quality and age suitability. Another important factor we consider when we curate the Year Group lists is balance - we spend a long time deliberating to ensure a breadth and depth of text types, genres, themes, diverse representation and reading level. The lists, which cover EYFS to Year 6, come with downloadable posters and checklists and are also available as full packs for school from Peters, or simply to browse online.

3. Special Interest Lists
 Sometimes there is a particular topic or theme that’s close to a child’s heart. Most of us have encountered a child who only wants to talk about dinosaurs, or who is interested in protecting the environment, or majorly into video gaming - and teachers often choose to look for books to match these interests. If children are already interested in a topic before they start reading about it, one of the barriers between the reader and the text is instantly removed and readers can enter right in without necessarily having to understand new concepts and vocabulary before they can feel happily absorbed by the book. Teresa Cremin, Professor of Education at The Open University, explains how interest-based reading can spark a love of books, stating that ‘Young readers find different reasons for reading, but all deserve to encounter texts which have particular salience and interest to them, so that they can come to value the experience and be caught in a web of fiction or non-fiction which inspires and motivates them to return - to renew such an imaginatively energizing engagement.’* Finding books that match special interests can be an excellent gateway into the world of reading for children, and the BooksForTopics special interest booklists can be a useful place to start.

4. Follow the season
 Sometimes readers simply want to read about the topics that everyone is talking about. During the Summer Olympics and Football World Cup, our sports and football booklists were among our top-viewed resources, while during the Black Lives Matter protests many of our users turned to our Black History booklist for guidance, demonstrating the demand for books that matched the events everyone was talking about at the time. At key times of year - like Science Week, Anti- bullying- Week or Christmas, we also see a surge in views on our special event booklists as teachers and parents look for suitable books for seasonal themes and current affairs. Keep an eye on the ‘Seasonal Booklists’ tab on our menu, or sign up to our email newsletter to keep in the loop about books themed around upcoming events through the year.

5. Branching Out
 A quick scan through Teacher Twitter or Parenting Facebook Groups will quickly bring up a myriad of similar questions when it comes to book recommendations. ’Can you recommend a book for fans of Wimpy Kid?’, or ‘My daughter only reads David Walliams books - what else can I give her’, or ‘How can I move my child on from Rainbow Magic?’. Our Branching Out posters and booklists are designed to offer similar suggestions to the popular books and series that are often so appealing that readers tend to get stuck on them and struggle to move on. Using our lists, fans of Tom Gates are gently pointed towards Planet Stan or The Day the Screens Went Blank, whereas die-hard Harry Potter readers may enjoy the suggestion of trying Amari and the Night Brothers or Nevermoor. 

I hope that this has given you a flavour of some of pathways through the BooksForTopics website. Whichever route you take, the end goal is the same - helping teachers and parents to find hidden gems that hit the spot for readers just at the right moment. We aim to give a series of options for readers to choose from, and with complementary sites like Toppsta at the ready with a treasure-trove of reader reviews to help you to finish the selection process, teachers and families have a terrific toolkit at their disposal to find the reading riches that await. 

Reference: *Cremin, Teresa (2007). Revisiting reading for pleasure: Delight, desire and diversity. In: Goouch, Kathy and Lambirth, Andrew eds. Understanding Phonics and the Teaching of Reading: A Critical Perspective. Berkshire, UK: McGraw Hill, pp. 166–19