Guidance: About the Reception Booklist (from BooksForTopics)

What should children be reading in Reception?

Sharing books with children in the Early Years provides a gateway into a world of imagination, empathy and delight, as well as being crucial for developing language and literacy skills. Children in Reception will often explore books with their hands and eyes before being able to read the words accurately for themselves, and making available a range of high-quality books with a strong visual interest level is key. Choose stories with bright and bold illustrations, like Super Duper You or How to Catch a Star, as well as books with textures and interesting details for hands and eyes to explore like Luna Loves Art or the interactive visual feast You Choose.

Storytime is a treasured time of day for children of this age. Positive experiences with books for 4 and 5 year olds can lay the foundations for an enjoyment of reading for years to follow. Look for stories with a strong and simple narrative structure and a clear beginning, middle and end to help young children to understand basic story arcs, like the fun search-and-rescue adventure The Great Explorer or the tale of falling out and making up again in Helen Cooper’s classic picturebook Pumpkin Soup.

With these factors in mind, we’ve selected a balanced list of books recommended to read with Reception children. The books on this list are not intended to replace school reading schemes, which are designed specifically for the teaching of phonics and reading. Instead, the books on this list are for additional reading for pleasure with children and, at this age, the books selected here are best shared with an adult reading aloud while enabling the children to look at the words and pictures at the same time – either in a class setting or as a one-to-one storytime. Be sure to introduce books that tempt beginner readers to join in reading some of the words and lines independently or to predict the end of lines through rhymes and repeated sections like Zog or The Cat and The Rat and the Hat . Enjoying the fun of reading these books together will offer enormous encouragement to children making their own steps towards independent reading.

Which books are best for 4 and 5 year olds?

Our list has been handpicked by experts who have specifically looked for the best books for children aged 4 and 5 to reflect their age, developmental stage and interest level. Some of the best stories for this age feature familiar settings and relatable real-life experiences, like the joy of sharing a sandwich or toys with a new friend in Hello, Friend, the sadness of a lost toy in Shirley Hughes’ classic story Dogger or the fun of shared recycling projects My Must-Have Mum. Others invite the imagination to venture a little further afield, like the hilarious giant octopus who lands on a house in Octopus Shocktopus or the tale of a blue monster who is consumed with so much greed that he even eats the sun, in Blue Monster Wants It All.

A number of the stories on our Reception booklist explore the tricky world of learning to get on with others well, like Fair Shares or Rabbit’s Pancake Panic. Others still develop an understanding of different emotions, like Anna Llenas’ hugely popular The Colour Monster. If you are looking for stories from other cultures, try Chitra Soundar’s retelling of an Indian flood story in Pattan’s Pumpkin. We also have an additional list of diverse and inclusive books for EYFS, if you need an even more extensive selection to diversify your library.

We’ve included a handful of true classics on this Reception reading list, featuring stories that have been entertaining children of this age for generations  – such as Judith Kerr’s much-loved The Tiger Who Came to Tea or the delightful tales about Mrs Pepperpot, an intriguing and adventurous old lady who can shrink down to the size of a pepperpot. Other books have been inspired by more recent events, like Rain Before Rainbows, which is a beautifully illustrated exploration of finding optimism in difficult times.

For this age group, tales that rhyme not only make for entertaining storytimes but also form a fundamental part of phonetic development. We recommend the Oi Frog series for a giggle-worthy rhyme time, or James Carter’s out-of-this-world poetry collection Zim Zam Zoom.

Please click the link for more information A list of recommended books for Reception: 50 Recommended Reads (booksfortopics.com)