Autumn Term Highlights

Reap the rewards of having the very best fresh books in your classroom libraries this autumn with these stunning fiction, non-fiction and poetry recommendations. Our highlight collections are all about getting brand new, high quality, captivating, exciting, and rewarding reads into the hands of your pupils and there is no better way to promote a culture of reading for pleasure in your school. We read a huge number of books each term and pick only the top stand-out books for these collections because we want to exceed your expectations, dazzle your literacy co-ordinator and, above all, help as many children as possible develop a life-long love of reading.

Picture Books for Reception:

What the Crow Saw Below by Robert Tregoning

This gorgeous picture book features a brilliant rhyming text and an enjoyable, fable-like story about what you miss out on if you focus on your fears. A curious young crow is instructed to look down for signs of danger, but, when she looks around she sees that the dangers are less than imagined and when she looks up there is a whole sky to explore! The illustrations are strikingly beautiful, the writing engaging, and the language lovely. We highly recommend this book and are sure it will become a class favourite.

A Wild Walk to School by Rebecca Cobb

This picture book is an absolute delight to read, charming, funny and beautifully illustrated. The talented Rebecca Cobb has created a brilliantly observed imaginary world of two girls getting ready and going to school. The familiar school morning routines and games of tightrope walking on a low wall or imagining the cracks in the pavement to be lava, will resonate strongly with young children and they will be enchanted by the twist at the end! Every page is thoroughly enjoyable and promotes reading for pleasure amongst the youngest in your school.

Non-Fiction for Reception:

What We Wear When We Take Care by Sarah Finan

This vibrant non-fiction picture book explores different types of protective clothing suitable for a wide variety of activities. The artwork is dramatic, inclusive, lively and eye-catching, brilliantly capturing snapshots of movement and activity. The simple text introduces helmets, goggles, headphones, masks, high-vis vests, gloves and boots, and the pages showing different people using them are further brought to life with a wonderful selection of descriptive and onomatopoeic words that make it a joy to read aloud. Familiar examples, like children wearing winter gloves and a dentist wearing a mask, are shown alongside the more unusual such as a falconer wearing a gauntlet and a welder’s face guard to make the text both relevant and interesting. This is a brilliant book for encouraging children to talk about their experiences, to extend their understanding of the world, and to share the joy of reading.

Picture Books for Year 1:

Natterjack Toad Can’t Believe It! by Sean Taylor

This funny story of a toad relishing eating his Chocolate Chunk Crunchy Munch Cookies is hugely entertaining, has a satisfying narrative, and features repetition and a playful use of language. Each time the toad tries to take a bite of his favourite snack he spots a danger, something that would spell disaster if he munched on something that crunched! Entertain and share reading for pleasure with your class while developing their vocabulary and language skills with this brilliant book.

Victor, the Wolf with Worries by Catherine Rayner

Iris & Isaac, Abigail, and Harris Finds His Feet; Catherine Rayner’s books are always stunning, but Victor, the Wolf with Worries might be our favourite so far. It is not only beautiful to look at and comforting to read, but also one of the best books we have seen exploring the emotion of worry. It promotes a resilient approach; encouraging young children to understand that worry is a part of life, that it comes and goes and what to do to ease it. At the end of the book Victor is confident that he knows what to do the next time he feels worried and your class will too. An enjoyable book at any time and a useful resource for exploring emotions as part of the PSHE curriculum and promoting class discussions.

Non-Fiction for Year 1:

Ranger Hamza’s Eco Quest by Ranger Hamza

The reassuring presence and expertise of Cbeebies Ranger Hamza is only one of the many features that makes this book stand out from the crowd. Even the way it has been produced gently promotes an understanding of sustainability and the simple text effectively communicates so much more than is typical of books on this topic for young children. Satisfying rhyming couplets sit alongside nuggets of non-fiction, simply explained conservation concepts and a wonderful selection of accessible actions to support nature wherever you live. We loved the way that this book fosters a genuine curiosity and respect for the natural world accessible to all, and appreciated the positive images of children with disabilities actively enjoying outside and making an environmental contribution. This will become your go to book on this topic and is the book your eco-committee would choose and that your library has been missing.

Picture Books for Year 2:

The Elephant & the Sea by Ed Vere

This exquisite picture book from the award-winning author-Illustrator Ed Vere is a delight to read, absorbing to look at, and has an emotional depth delivered with a light touch. Meet Gabriel, an elderly elephant, his ‘face has as many lines as the sea has waves’ but once he was young with dreams of joining the lifeboat crew. Gabriel’s is a touching story of purpose, determination, grit, hard work, a daring rescue in a fearsome storm, and a life well-lived. The beautiful illustrations, a homage to the Cornish coast, are vivid, textured and evocative; and the text is rich, and lyrical with a satisfying rhythm and refrain. This is a book to revisit and return to many times and we highly recommend it for your core book list.

The Little Wooden Robot & the Log Princess by Tom Gauld

This celebrated, award-winning, modern fairytale will engage readers with surprising twists and turns and appealing illustrations. The author-illustrator is a renowned cartoonist, and this is reflected in the unusual use of illustration which tells the story using graphic novel-like features. Strikingly different and packed with adventure, this charming story of a brother and sister has a satisfying narrative, leaves room for the reader’s imagination and has broad appeal. The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess is a superb book for supporting pupils’ own storytelling and we are sure it will be a very popular pick from your library shelves for years to come.

Non-Fiction for Year 2:

What’s Inside a Caterpillar Cocoon? by Rachel Ignotofsky

Every page of this stunning book is a work of art that enhances the science and delights readers. The illustrations are both beautiful to look at and packed with unusual details that highlight the variety and richness of the natural world and promote curiosity and wonder in the reader.  We also loved the way that the variety, habitat, metamorphosis, anatomy, senses, behaviour and importance of butterflies and moths are compared and contrasted side by side to encourage a greater depth of knowledge of these animals and their adaptations. This is certainly not your average lifecycle book!

Fiction for Year 3:

Betty Steady & the Toad Witch by Nicky Smith-Dale

This fast-paced, ridiculously fun, and joke-packed adventure story is outrageously entertaining and will win over the most reluctant of readers. Betty Steady guards the kingdom, she has trounced all their enemies single-handed and does not think she needs any help, ever…until she is shrunk to the size of a hamster by the evil Toad Witch and finds herself in need of friends. We loved this exuberant character, you cannot help but cheer Betty on, and the playful and irresistible use of language that your pupils will pick up and run with. ‘Twadlle cakes!’ What are you waiting for, it’s time to ‘lick the toenails of adventure!’

Lenny Lemmon & the Alien Invasion by Ben Davis

If you have not yet met the irrepressible Lenny Lemmon then this is the perfect place to do so. We have been enjoying watching this entertaining series for readers in LKS2 grow for a couple of years now and love the perfect blend of humour and empathy, skilfully written by Carnegie nominated author, Ben Davis. In this book Lenny is trying to save the dwindling town from death by giant mall by staging an alien invasion. As always, his heart is in the right place but his decisions are dubious and it takes all his powers of persuasion to get his friend, Sam, to dress up as an alien! It is only a matter of time before they are unmasked but how will the community react to the hoax? This book is not only enormously fun to read, it can also be used to discuss the motives and feelings of different characters and to open other discussions about right and wrong. We think of this book as ‘reading for pleasure +’.

Non-Fiction for Year 3:

Welcome Home by Tracey Turner

Visit twenty children living in a fascinating diversity of homes in this completely absorbing tour of the world. The beautiful illustrations are packed with captivating details and the small chunks of text give the reader a satisfying taste of life in other countries. Readers will enjoy meeting Munira from the Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan, Tomasz from the Falowiec apartment block in Poland, Tafsut from an underground cave home in Tunisia and many more. We loved the way that each child tells us about their home and themselves, it helps readers to feel connected to others living very different lives and to see the commonalities as well as the differences. We also learnt that there is an apartment block in China that has a train running through it, that houses in Svalbard are built on stilts so that they don’t warm the permafrost and sink and the people leave their doors open so that anyone walking past can hide from polar bears!

Fiction for Year 4:

Flora Stormer & the Golden Lotus by Isabella Harcourt

This unexpected gem of a book really surprised us and it’s always great to discover a shorter confident read for Year 4 that develops language skills and expands pupils’ vocabulary over fewer, nicely illustrated, pages. It is beautifully written historical fiction with a touch of Jumanji-like magic, lovely language, and a brilliant neurodiverse protagonist. Flora is a talented young artist with Tourette’s Syndrome who finds herself on a quest for a rainforest flower that can cure all ills along with a pantomime baddie and her new friend and inventor extraordinaire, Pavan. There are scenes of historical prejudice and Flora herself wants to be cured until she accepts that she is not ill and that her tics are to be welcomed as part of the amazing whole person she is. We will be keeping an eye out for more from the author of this excellent historical romp that showed a subtle awareness of the issues around the historic collection of plants and artefacts and sensitively explored the challenges of neurodiversity and inequality, while remaining at all times a thoroughly enjoyable magical adventure.

The Stone Age Clash by Josh Lacey

We always keep our eyes open for brilliant books that bring the history curriculum alive for your pupils, and The Time Travel Twins series is a superb example. In this perilous adventure the twins visit two different time periods in the Stone Age showing the transition from hunter/gatherers to the settled people who built Stone Henge. Both times the twins are separated so that their different points of view can be compared and contrasted, and a richer understanding of the time period explored. Experiences include: seeing mammoths, meeting a Neanderthal, joining a small tribe of early humans, a ceremony at the site that would become Stonehenge, pulling the first stone to the site and seeing it erected. We love the way that readers feel as if they have met different people from the Stone Age and how this book is both an exciting read and an excellent resource for Stone Age project work, deepening pupils’ understanding of the topic. You are going to want to find space on your classroom and library shelves for this one.

Non-Fiction for Year 4:

24 Hours under the Ocean by Lan Cook

Non-fiction does not get more engrossing and immersive than this fantastic book. The graphic novel presentation is brilliantly used to make the reader feel like part of a submarine crew on a scientific mission from the safety briefing to the post dive debriefing. The view from the submarine reveals extraordinary sights based on real scientific discoveries and readers not only learn about life in the deep sea but also get a wonderful insight into the work of scientists. This is an exciting and absorbing voyage of discovery that will prove very popular with the whole class.

Fiction for Year 5:

I Am Rebel by Ross Montgomery

Rebel is a loyal dog on a quest to find his Tom, a farm boy who has marched off to war in a rural kingdom in the 16th century. Along the way, he befriends other animals and faces great peril with fierce love and determination. This book has the feel of a classic, it is emotionally engaging, well-crafted and the relatively accessible text disguises a rich narrative that can be read on many levels. This book is much more than the story of a loyal dog and his companions; reading and rereading can draw out themes of embracing change, growing up, recognising the needs of others, and valuing the ‘small nothings’ that make life worth living and are worth fighting for. We always expect outstanding storytelling and a narrative with depth and breadth from Ross Montgomery, but this book exceeded all our expectations and gave us the most lovable canine protagonist.

The Letter with the Golden Stamp by Onjali Q. Raúf

This brilliant recount is told mostly through the vehicle of a police interview and is a fine example of this alternative writing style. The protagonist is a young Welsh carer, and stamp collector, who has gone to the extreme measure of posting herself to her estranged father in the hope of securing money to help her mother who has become bedridden with arthritis. The plight of young carers and family poverty are not shied away from but are handled with a sensitive and light touch in this warm and entertaining story that features great kindness alongside great challenges. Ultimately, it is the community that steps up to provide for the family in this absorbing and entertaining read, giving us another inspiring call to support those in need from the author of The Boy at the Back of the Class.

Non-Fiction for Year 5:

Ancient Worlds: First Great Civilizations

This awe-inspiring book gives readers an astonishing view of the ancient world from the Sumerian Civilization to Imperial China. Large double page spreads show richly detailed scenes rendered in realistic digital art to resemble a landscape photograph. Each snapshot shows people going about their daily lives and incorporates tiny details backed up by archaeological evidence and highlighted by text around the borders. The incredible scenes show ancient civilizations being built, trading, celebrating, worshiping, coming together, and at war in breath-taking detail. We have read a great many books on the ancient world but have never seen anything that brings these societies to life like this. The scale of the ziggurat in the Sumerian city of Ur, the hive of activity in Heit el-Ghurab, the pyramid builders city, in Ancient Egypt, the spectacle of the New Year festival in Persepolis in Persia, the bustle of the Agora in Athens, the drama of Chariot racing in ancient Rome and more are all vividly brought to life to captivate your pupils.

Fiction for Year 6:

The Boy to Beat the Gods by Ashley Thorpe

Inspired by Yoruba culture and set in a mythical Africa where a family of demigods demand sacrifices from the village tribes, this stand-out fantasy is steeped in West African tribal culture. When young Kayode’s village is visited by the gods and his sister is taken, he eats the fruit from the tree of the gods to grant him the power to challenge them. He is accompanied in his quest by a trickster god in the form of a goat, a warrior princess from another tribe and a young boy who has lost his parents.  We found the tribal culture and African landscape interesting and immersive, the immense presence of the gods dramatic, and the forging of alliances across divided tribes powerful in this brilliant debut.

Wolf Road by Alice Roberts

Alice Roberts has used her understanding as an anthropologist and experience as an author, broadcaster and Professor of Public Engagement in Science to bring the Ice Age alive for readers in Year 6. In her fiction debut, readers follow a small tribe’s seasonal journey from their winter hunting grounds to a camp where tribes gather together to enjoy the abundance of spring. Along the way, there is conflict and division within the tribe and between different tribes, new alliances, survival and death, grief and joy, hunting and gathering, shamanic practices, and a life-changing encounter with a Neanderthal. Professor Roberts spent time with the Sami people to research this book and this is evident in the rich detail of everyday life, the beautifully described world of the tribe and their profound connection to the landscape in which they live. We loved this vivid portrayal of life in the Ice Age, the rich detail that transports readers from the classroom to a tiny camp in a vast thawing wilderness, and the gripping drama of the perilous journey.

Non-Fiction for Year 6:

The Big Book of UK History by Lisa Williams

This up-to-date, inclusive, bright and appealing overview of UK history is a primary school library essential and history curriculum must-have. The joy of this book is the breadth of information, how so much is conveyed so simply, and the way that the history comes together to build a picture of the UK today. The author has a flare for making history feel relevant and the book has been brilliantly designed to flow effortlessly from one decade, or theme, to another. We loved the scope of the book from prehistoric geography to the coronation of King Charles III and the short diversions form the chronology to explore cultural themes such as literature, art, and sport.  It is really astonishing how much is covered in just 77 beautifully laid out pages that are a pleasure to read.

Poetry for KS1:

A Ticket to Kalamazoo! by James Carter

From the award-winning author of Zim Zam Zoom!, and energetically illustrated by the fabulous Neal Layton, comes 19 brand new zippy poems to read aloud. This exuberant collection is instantly engaging, perfect for developing children’s interest in poetry, and brilliant for supporting their own performance and writing. We are sure that this book will become a staple of KS1 classrooms, one to return to over and over again for poetry lessons, for a quick five minute poetry fix, and for fun.

Poetry for KS2:

Colossal Words for Kids by Colette Hiller

Irresistible to read and fantastic fun to share, this poetry book not only entertains but also introduces and defines a fabulous array of words usually only available to the most eloquent but made accessible to children through humorous rhymes and illustrations. Challenging your class to use words like voracious, replete or querulous in their writing, encouraging them to take pleasure in new words, and discovering the joy of using the perfect word is made easy and fun with Colossal Words for Kids. This book will certainly extend your pupils vocabulary in a memorable way, introduces a novel purpose to poetry that will be widely enjoyed, and stimulates the mind and creativity in interesting ways. We highly recommend this book for scintillating lessons.