Cleobury Mortimer Primary School

We are often asked to recommend books that are popular with children and have a good literary content. Reading a range of modern and classic literature will also help your child to develop their vocabulary whilst enjoying their reading.

Research has found that children benefit from reading for pleasure in many ways including:

‘Children who read for pleasure are likely to do significantly better at school than their peers, making greater progress in mathematics, development of vocabulary and spelling.’

(Sullivan & Brown, Social inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of reading, 2013)

‘The lack of vocabulary knowledge is primarily caused by lack of opportunity not a lack of natural ability’ (Chall et al)

‘Poor vocabulary is the prime cause of academic failure’ (Clegg et al)

Not only will it help their education and communication skills, but most importantly, they will really enjoy reading as long as they have a good book to suit their tastes.

We have therefore put together some suggestions for each year group in the form of a recommended reading list. We would also welcome your views and appreciate your suggestions about other books that could be added to the list.

Please remember that parents / carers have final responsibility for assessing the suitability of books that the children choose to read at home. If you want to find out more about a book, reading reviews and ratings on websites like www.lovereading4kids.co.uk and Amazon UK can often help.