Book Bands — A Guide

Whether you're looking to top up or fill gaps in your existing banded stock, start a book-banded library, track student progress, or simply learn what Book Bands are, you'll find everything you need in the answers to the commonly asked questions in this blog.

Browse our collections of Banded Books or start to build your Book Band Library now!

Jump to:

• What are Book Bands?
• Why Use Book Bands?
• What are the Book Band Colours?
• How do you use Book Bands?
• Can we use Book Bands to teach pupils to read?
• Is it beneficial to use banded books after a student has learnt to read?
• Can Book Bands help schools stretch their budget?
• How do you Book Band 'real' books?
• How do you band books for KS2?
• Can we band existing library books?
• How do we choose Book Bands for our super-confident and most able readers?
• Are there storage resources available for banded books?

What are Book Bands?

Originating from the Institute of Education’s (UCL, London) publication Book Bands for Guided Reading (Bickler et al, 1998) and their close ties with New Zealand led Reading Recovery initiative, book band levels were introduced as a means for schools to instil a breadth of reading across a variety of published reading schemes as opposed to one scheme alone. These bands ensured that reading schemes aligned with the criteria for each colour band/level, which corresponded to the National Curriculum.

Fast forward to today, and book bands are the most commonly adopted system used by schools and educational publishers of reading books, providing teachers with a means to assess children’s progress in absence of National Curriculum levels since 2014. As a result of moving away from NC levels, the book bands originally outlined for KS1 only have been extended to meet the demands of many schools for additional levels, including up to the end of KS2. This expansion allows for assessment and progression throughout the entire primary school years.

Many school suppliers, including Pandora Books, offer ‘Real’ Banded Books to broaden children’s reading experiences and promote reading enjoyment. ‘Real’ books are the kind of books that would be found in bookshops and libraries, and are distinct from reading scheme books, which are written with controlled language, intentionally levelled at children’s current reading ability. The levelling is therefore done in a ‘best fit’ way, meeting the criteria as closely as ‘real’ books can, while acknowledging the natural, non-contrived way these books are written.

Why Use Book Bands?

Banded books ultimately provide children with a pathway of progression in reading but also support teachers who are making book-buying decisions to meet the needs of individual pupils, bringing variety and breadth to children’s reading diets.

The philosophy behind book bands has not changed; at its heart, it provides schools with the opportunity to use a mix of reading scheme books and ‘real’ books from a range of publishers while supporting a structured reading progression and maintaining a consistent and appropriate level of challenge for pupils. By using banded 'real' books, children can freely choose books from a structured range, promoting independence and allowing them to select books that interest them. This approach provides just the right level of challenge, ensuring the reading experience is both enjoyable and successful, while also giving children the freedom to develop personal reading preferences, explore different genres, and cultivate their own tastes in books.

Use banded books to encourage a reading for pleasure community by sending them home to share. Get started by using our free PowerPoint presentation for parents about Sharing Books at Home or downloading Home Reading: Printable Leaflet for Parents, printing copies and popping them in book bags.

Browse our ‘real’ banded collections by book band level, genre, key stage or year group to find exactly what you need for your school.

Browse reading schemes levelled by book band colours here.

What are the Book Band Colours?

The colour bands begin at Lilac (for a Reception aged child sharing wordless books) and are available up to Black Plus (for a super-confident Year 6 reader) from many educational publishers and school suppliers of reading scheme and ‘real’ books. Most publishers and educational suppliers use a standardised colour palette, and although the Institute of Education’s (UCL, London) publication Book Bands for Guided Reading (Bickler et al, 1998) criteria did not extend beyond White, publishers work with literacy consultants and reading experts with years of levelling experience to align their ‘bands’ with commonly established attributes for each level. Lime level is now deemed as vital for readers up to the end of Year 2 and  KS2 book bands are widely used in primary schools and with secondary school students who need additional reading support.

The table below displays each book band level and its equivalent reading age. Most children will progress through the levels during the year, so for example, in most schools, a reception child working at the expected level would finish the year on yellow.

Are Book Band colours always the same?

While book band colours from Lilac to White generally follow the standardised system outlined in the Institute of Education’s publication Book Bands for Guided Reading (Bickler et al, 1998), the colour bands for KS2 are not always consistent. This is because no universal system exists for levelling books by colour beyond year 2. Although banded levels for years 3 to 6 have been established and widely used for many years, different reading schemes and publishers may develop their own versions of colour-coded levels to group books based by difficulty. These systems can vary in how they assess reading complexity, meaning that the same banded level in one system might not match the same colour or reading level in another.

You can find books for a specific book band colour in our Book Bands collections and Reading Schemes collections by selecting the appropriate book band colour level within the product filters.

Inconsistencies in reading schemes can be tricky to get your head around! Below are a few examples explained in more detail. Several widely used reading schemes, such as Oxford Reading Tree, Collins Big Cat, and Pearson’s Bug Club, have their own interpretations of what constitutes a certain level of reading difficulty, and their colours do not always align. The tables below illustrate these differences:

How do Collins Big Cat Levels relate to Book Bands?

Browse Collins Big Cat collections.

Why are Big Cat Progress books dual-banded?

Big Cat Progress books are dual-banded, meaning they are specifically designed to cater to children at key stage 2 who have a reading level aligned with key stage 1. This dual-banding approach ensures that the books are age-appropriate in terms of content and interest while being accessible for children reading below age-related expectations.

Each of the 70 dual-banded books targets both an interest level suitable for children in years 3 to 6 and a lower reading ability level. This means that even if a child is struggling with reading, they can engage with material that feels relevant and engaging for their age group. The books are carefully levelled by reading expert Cliff Moon to guarantee systematic, measurable progression. Interest levels are banded using Big Cat colours for KS2, from Copper to Diamond.

Browse Collins Big Cat Progress collections.

How do Oxford Levels compare to Book Bands?

Browse Oxford Schemes, Lilac to Dark Red.

Do Pearson’s Bug Club Levels differ from Book Bands?

Browse Bug Club Phonics and Bug Club Independent.

Variations in colour band usage can also arise from publishers developing their own levelling systems, which may not follow a shared framework. Some systems target specific age groups with varying focuses (such as decoding, comprehension, or fluency), and individual schools or teachers may adapt or combine different systems to meet their students' needs.

This can be confusing for both parents and educators, so it’s important that schools fully understand the specific system they are using and provide clear guidance for parents. Find the exact books you’re looking for by filtering by individual book band colours, key stage, or year group within Book Bands or Reading Schemes.

How do you use Book Bands?

Banded books provide a structured progression in reading, allowing teachers to make informed book selections based on pupils' needs, while promoting independent reading, skill development, and progress tracking through a mix of reading schemes and ‘real’ books. As children gain confidence, they progress through the banded colours, and with the broad selection available at each colour band level, they should find books that appeal to them. This allows teachers to encourage reading for pleasure even at an early stage in their reading journey.

For schools that wish to implement book bands right from the very start, many publishers have organised their phonics resources into banded packs. Lilac to Orange collections offer opportunities to practice phonics, with children enjoying these books alongside an adult for support. Many schools provide fully decodable phonics books in the early stages, such as those found in our Mixed Scheme Banded Boxes, and then move onto ‘Real’ Banded Books as children's reading becomes more fluent in year 2. Younger children who are still working through their phonics will benefit from sharing stories and being read to, and Pandora Books’ Early Years collections offer lots of gorgeous books for sharing in class or at home. Ongoing reading assessments help determine each child’s reading level and whether they are ready to move up to the next level to maintain appropriate challenge.

Typically progression looks like this*:

*all readers will progress at different speeds and may have spurts or pauses at varying times

Can we use Book Bands to teach pupils to read?

The Reading Framework (DfE, July 2023), driven by a commitment to raising standards of literacy for all, identifies synthetic phonics as one of the most secure and best-evidenced way for children learn to read, and it recommends that all schools adopt a synthetic approach to teach it. This includes fidelity to one synthetic systematic phonics (SSP) programme. Pandora Books offers a wide range of recommended reading schemes for primary school classrooms, including phonically decodable books that form part of an SSP programme (SSP). All our books are also supplied with free protective jackets, so they last much longer.

Pupils still learning to read should have access to decodable books that align with the school's SSP programme and match their phonic knowledge. Our Book Banded Pink to Orange Mixed Reading Scheme Collections are fully decodable, making them perfect for practicing and consolidating learning at the end of each phase. Many schools use fully decodable phonics schemes in these early reading stages, transitioning children to banded ‘real’ books in Year 2.

Is it beneficial to use banded books after a student has learnt to read?

As mentioned, KS2 book bands are now firmly established in many schools as a progressive reading framework and a means of evidencing children’s reading progression. The Reading Framework talks about children building ‘progressive fluency’ and ‘putting in the reading miles’. Banded ‘real’ books are ideal for giving children access to high-quality books by contemporary and classic authors including from a range of genres, within fiction and non-fiction that will allow children to discover their identities as readers. At each stage, children have a sense of freely choosing ‘real’ books that appeal to their developing reading tastes whilst learning how to pick books that importantly match their ability and that they can therefore get the most satisfaction and enjoyment from. Access to a good selection of books at every colour band is vital to supporting reading progress.

Some secondary schools are now using book bands to support and monitor progress for students who require additional support in their reading.

Can Book Bands help schools stretch their budget?

Book Bands can certainly help schools to stretch budgets further. Most schools will have selected a systematic, synthetic phonics programme for teaching children to read throughout EYFS and KS1. However, banded books are ideal for extending collections of decodable scheme books for practising phonics at the end of a phase, topping up on ‘real’ books for classroom libraries or for home/school and independent reading. By working with a book band system a variety of publishers and reading schemes can be accessed and if any ‘new’ resources are added to stock it will not deem older stock redundant. Classroom books can easily be updated and damages replaced without starting from scratch, as everything will continue to slot into the programme. Many school suppliers are continuously ‘banding’ newly published books from a wide range of authors and publishers that can fit into established classroom or school libraries making it simpler than ever to incorporate new banded 'real' books into library collections and add breadth, variety, and greater depth to reading choices, at just the right levels.

How do you Book Band 'real' books?

Our team has many years of experience levelling ‘real’ books — when we talk about ‘real’ books, we mean books that have not been developed specifically for a reading scheme and have been written for the pure enjoyment of reading. While reading scheme books are written to precise levels, our team pioneered the banding of 'real' books. The value of applying book bands to freely written books by exciting authors, designed to absorb and captivate readers, has been appreciated by schools for over two decades. Browse our collections of ‘Real’ Banded Books by book band level, key stage or year group.

Each month, we receive sample copies and manuscripts from all the leading children’s publishers to review. We read all the books that we find suitable for our collections and level the texts. It is only by reading the books that we can ensure that the text level is consistent and that the content is appropriate for a school library. It is at this point that we would weed out any books that include language inappropriate for the classroom, contain themes or scenes that children reading at this age may have difficulty, or do not significantly meet our ideal criteria for primary school reading books. We are looking for books that are not only at the right text level but which also promote reading for pleasure, use language well, introduce interesting vocabulary, and ensure that as many different styles, text types, themes, and genres are included in each collection as possible to broaden children’s reading.

We regularly review our levelling alongside the leading educational publishers to ensure that we select books at the appropriate text level. We consider a variety of elements, including the vocabulary, sentence structure, text density, and narrative style. We also consider the knowledge that the reader is assumed to have, the emotional maturity needed to fully engage with the text, and the complexity of the story, as these features impact fluency and comprehension. When levelling books that have not been written to a prescribed level, it can be challenging to work to a strict list of criteria. However, through careful comparison with scheme books and other ‘real’ books that have been levelled by educational publishers, as well as examining the texts alongside each other, it is possible to assess whether a text represents a good fit for a level or if it is a step up or down in level.

The banding criteria for books levelled Pink to White is firmly rooted in the original work produced by The Institute of Education in ‘Book Bands for Guided Reading’ and the supplementary ‘Which Book and Why’. The book bands Lime to Black Plus build on these original levels, offering readers incremental steps in text level and meeting the needs of readers throughout KS2.

How do you band books for KS2?

We read all our books, have a strong pedagogical understanding of how children develop as readers and have an unparalleled knowledge of children’s publishing to draw upon to meet their needs. For all our levelling, we constantly read, compare and contrast our 'real' books with scheme books and with each other to ensure they represent a true progression in reading and in our range. It is a team effort, and we regularly discuss which features we feel push a book up or down a band. For instance, a book’s vocabulary may fit the Dark Blue level, but its narrative complexity might make it only accessible to the most confident readers in Year 5 reading at the Dark Red level. We take into account many factors depending on the text; perhaps the reader would be required to have unexpected knowledge or insight to fully access the language or the narrative; and themes, like time travel, or devices, like parallel narratives, can render a book inaccessible to all but the most fluent reader; perhaps the text level is just right but the story unlikely to engage readers reading at this level. With each book we are asking would a child reading at that level be able to access this text and what would their challenges be, the answers to these questions are unique to each book.

Can we band existing library books?

Are you looking to organise your library into book bands, plug gaps in provision, or refresh your library's book collection? We’re here to help! You can easily scan the ISBNs of your current library stock using a simple app or an inexpensive device. After scanning, simply send us a CSV or Excel file containing your book details. We will then compare your inventory with our records, categorise all the books for which we have information, and supply you with a list of book titles matched to book bands. Moreover, we will pinpoint any gaps in your collection and suggest packs to address those needs. This process guarantees that your library remains current and fully compliant with the book band system, allowing you to make the most of your resources and ensuring your books cater to the needs and interests of all your students. Contact Us  for more details and to begin!

How do we choose Book Bands for our super-confident and most able readers?

For confident and super-confident readers, books must be matched appropriately to their emotional maturity and offer challenge and greater depth in their reading. For this reason, Pandora Books collates specific book collections for confident readers in KS1, LKS2, and UKS2 where extra emphasis is put on the content being absolutely spot on and not inappropriate for their chronological age whilst the book band level is higher. Our collections offer a mix of brilliant, contemporary fiction and some timeless classics so that children reading at greater depth can access enticing books they’ll love so they can continue to be reading role models for the rest of the class.

In addition to Brown, Grey, Dark Blue and Dark Red Books, schools will find Black and Black Plus levels just as useful to them. This level, intended for the truly confident and most able readers in year 6, (and super-confident readers in year 5), may only be purposeful to a very select group of readers who require stimulating books that challenge them and keep them wanting to read at this critical time. Each book is chosen with appropriate content in mind, as we at Pandora Books read every book and screen out those with inappropriate themes or language for primary school age children. When we build these collections we look for captivating contemporary and classic novels that are extraordinary examples of writing and standout stories that will live long in the reader's memory.

Are there storage resources available for banded books?

Pandora Books offer a range of coloured storage boxes and stickers ideal for organising your school library, classroom book selection and banded reading schemes.