BooksForTopics Year Group Booklists: Behind the Scenes

April 25th 2022

We’re thrilled to be launching the new '50 Recommended Reads' Year Group book packs in partnership with BooksForTopics this week – but have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes when BooksForTopics produce the lists, and how we put your packs together here at Peters? Read on to find out.

Bookpost sorting

Various children's book publishers submit books to Books For Topics to review, with the hope of being featured on the website.

During some weeks, there is a HUGE amount of bookpost to look through, and from this, we select which books will get a more detailed review. There are no sponsored positions or paid-for book promotions on our Year Group booklists; instead, the books are entirely selected by BooksForTopics' team of experts for quality and classroom suitability. This means that out of the thousands of books out there, the titles that make it onto the 50 Recommended Reads lists deserve their place purely based on our assessment of the books as genuinely top quality ‘reading for pleasure’ options for the relevant year groups.

Review panel

Some of the books received from publishing partners for consideration on the BooksForTopics website are sent on to be assessed by their panel of reviewers.

With a panel of 50 reviewers from across the primary education community, BooksForTopics are able to try out new books in a variety of school settings before recommending them on the website, making sure that they are only recommending the most suitable books for your classrooms.

The review panellists are teachers, TAs, school librarians, headteachers and education consultants and they feed back information about which books are most popular in their school libraries and classrooms, as well as writing detailed reviews for some of the books featured too.

Booklist curation

This is a fun and busy stage of the process! 

Taking into account the feedback from partners and reviewers, BooksForTopics begin to put together curated lists of 50 books for each year group within the reading framework, and we work with them to ensure that the books chosen for the Year Group lists are readily available from the publishers to be supplied to schools and classrooms in book packs. For the Year Group booklists, they choose books for reading for pleasure at various ages and stages (either independently or for shared reading with adults), rather than choosing books with strong topic links or for English study texts.

A lot of space is needed to spread the books out (it feels like swimming in an ocean of books), and much deliberation goes into getting the balance of books just right. When BooksForTopics curate each list, they aim for a balance across different genres and text types, recognising that reading for pleasure looks different to different children. Some children naturally navigate towards non-fiction, while others find graphic novels or poetry more appealing. Other still are looking for books with a tactile or novelty element or for something to make them laugh.

Each year group booklist contains a balance of age-appropriate fiction, picture books, non-fiction, poetry and graphic novels, with a handful of novelty or tactile books added in too. They've aimed to collate lists that cater for different reading styles, interest levels, publication dates (you’ll find some true golden oldies as well as brand new titles on each list) and also books that reflect a diversity of characters and settings. The 50 spaces on each list are hotly contended, and consequently, some of the most highly reviewed titles may not make it onto these lists. Instead, they are assigned to other places on the BooksForTopics website, like our topic booklists or other more specific reading for pleasure collections.

The reason the lists are updated each year is to make space for newly published books and to make sure that we offer the best balance of titles available for each year group. 

Peters book packs for schools 

BooksForTopics send their book lists over to the team here at Peters, who have been busy stocking and packing up your books ready to be shipped to schools. We have stocked up on thousands of copies of the books from the updated lists, and have been busy putting the relevant books into the packs of 50 for school orders. We handle all orders of book packs for schools on behalf of BooksForTopics, including managing school accounts, stocking, packing, shipping and creating posters and checklists.

Order the newly updated packs from Tuesday 26th April here.