“What should I read next?” Book recommendations for 7-12 year olds
“What should I read next?” I am often asked this question by students and I frequently have parents and friends emailing me to ask for book suggestions for children. At my school I have used Follet Destiny to create a recommended fiction collection for each year group from year 3 to 6. The students enjoy using these to create a wish list for their next reads. It is a good way to browse by first judging the books by their covers (I say there is nothing wrong with that!), and then reading the blurbs. All of the Wordle’s below were made by the fantastic Professor Chin Ee Loh. Each Wordle has the top 20 student responses from each year group to the question “What is the best book you read this year?”
Click on the Wordle for the Year 3 (Age 7-8) Recommended Reading List
Click on the Wordle for the Year 4 (Age 8-9) Recommended Reading List
Click on the Wordle for the Year 5 (Age 9-10) Recommended Reading List
Click on the Wordle for the Year 6 (Age 10-12) Recommended Reading List
Click the tabs below for two lists of recommended recent non fiction for 7-12 year olds.
Dulwich Information Book Award Books – More about this award can be found here
In the four fiction collections above it may be appropriate for children to browse the age categories above and below their age depending on their reading proficiency and interests. I have also been involved in shortlisting the Books for Red Dot Book awards for a number of years and recommend looking at these titles. I also send people to use these four websites, which provide a lot of great recommendations.
I am going to finish this blog post with some posters that one of my library assistants helped me to make with our year 6 students. It is always great to have student voice involved in these tasks and my student library ambassadors were happy spending many a lunch time creating these posters and deliberating with me on what titles should be included.
