As one school year ends and another approaches, it is time for one of the most challenging and yet enjoyable tasks that I must tackle each year and this year I have a brilliant new colleague to help me! Amy McKay’s invaluable hands-on experience on the front line as a secondary school librarian, as well as the wealth of knowledge of children’s literature from over 10 years as the National Co- ordinator of what we now know as the Yoto Carnegies, is absolutely invaluable!
Hopefully you will have all found the Class Lists on the LoveReading4Schools website useful? Especially perhaps if you were taking over a new age group or class or taking responsibility for the library or reading across the school for the first time? We have lists for every class from Reception to Year 10 and each year we update them. These are lists with the full added value from LoveReading too with extracts and links to author resources and the facility to add to your own lists or buy the complete list.
So, what makes this a challenging task? We are fortunate to be living in a ‘golden age’ of children’s publishing and so there is no shortage of new books published each year and you only have to look at the shortlists and recent winners like those of the UKLA book awards to know that there are some stunning books to choose from and therein lies the problem! The lists are intended to be classroom must haves for that age group and are not just a list of new books. Every age group will have ‘significant’ titles that need to stay because they are texts which have stood the test of time and which each new class will enjoy just as much as their predecessors. But on the other hand, it is important to have a refresh and to find space for these stunning new books that I have mentioned.
Choosing which books must stay and which books really must have a place, leads to a lot of discussion and this is what makes the task so enjoyable. There really is nothing better than ‘book talk’ or as Teresa Cremin of the Open University Reading for Pleasure research has named it ‘book blether’! But first we draw up a list of possible additions to each list, going back over the past 12 months, making sure that we don’t miss anything. A lot of these will be books that we have covered in our monthly reviews but also perhaps ones that we missed at the time. Books that were not sent for review, but word of mouth or award shortlisting or indeed book Twitter have brought to our attention. We need to look at trends and ensure we are up to date. Growth areas are most definitely graphic novels, especially for the younger age group. Self-esteem and wellbeing are still strong trends, as is environmental anxiety, and the thankful resurgence YA continues, if anything Book Tok is bigger than ever!
Then we start the real debate!
What sort of factors influence our choices? We will of course want each list to reflect diversity. It is absolutely vital that every child can find themselves represented in the books they are presented with in our schools. Luckily this is something that has been getting easier since the first CLPE Reflecting Realities research. From a shockingly low base in 2017 where just 4% of children’s publishing featured an ethnic minority central character, to 2021 where the figure has increased to 20%, the publishing industry has made progress. We will also want to ensure that groundbreaking examples of inclusion find a place. For example, James Catchpole and Karen George with You're So Amazing have continued to show us the reality of life for a disabled child and put an uncomfortable mirror to the way society reacts to them. Similarly, the astounding YA novel Sing if You Can’t Dance by Alexia Casale for the first time has a disabled central character, who is anything but a victim and defies pity to forge her place in the world and find love. Books which will allow young people living with disability to see themselves and that will give everyone greater empathy and understanding as well as being truly enjoyable, entertaining reads, are books that all libraries and schools must have.
We also want to ensure we have diversity of genre to have the widest appeal for readers and to include some non-fiction and poetry. There are subject specific lists on the website (LoveReading is very responsive to requests so if you need a list on a particular topic – just ask!) and so these lists are aimed at reading for pleasure, but we all know there are children and young people who absolutely do read information texts for pleasure.
One of the most difficult areas of discussion is deciding in which class a particular book will best fit. We recognise that every class will have quite a range of abilities, but it would be impossible to cover that within a single list. We in fact assume that if you had students working above or below the expected levels you would look up or down the lists for suggestions! But the fact remains that many books could appeal to a wide range of ages and we have to decide the optimum age group for it. At secondary level this decision inevitably includes issues of suitability of content. There is a real difference between books a student might self-select and those which are recommended. School librarians and class teachers have the advantage of knowing the young people involved and can tailor their recommendations accordingly. Our selections inevitably have to be more neutral!
We take all this very seriously! As book enthusiasts and reading addicts we know all too well that as soon as anyone publishes a list of, for example, the 100 books you must read before you are 12 or any Top Ten of anything and immediately other enthusiasts get on their high horses about what has been missed! Any selection is inevitably in the end a personal choice, but previously Tricia and I used our many years of experience supporting schools in School Library Services and the School Library Association to inform our choices and now Amy can add a current school perspective too! Her insights and experience led to some fabulous discussions.
So, as we knuckle down to our favourite task you can expect to find fresh lists awaiting you at the start of the next academic year. I hope they will be useful and we would love to hear your feedback!
Browse our updated Reading Lists, by year group :
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