Finding books for beginner and newly confident young readers
Our guide to series for younger readers will help you find books at the right level for your child to read.
It will help you to:
- Find suitable books for your child to read
- Match books to your child’s reading ability
- Widen your child’s choice of books
- Find good books to share together
- Encourage your child to enjoy reading
- Build your child’s confidence
- Help to improve your child’s reading skills
How does it work?
- Think about your child’s level of reading. Reading together regularly at home will help you to decide. Most schools send home reading books to practise.
- Talk to your child’s teacher about his progress
- Look at the sections in this guide and try to match up your child’s reading skills
- Go to the library and look for the series suggested at the end of each section
- Books in the same series usually look similar. They may have the same coloured cover or a distinctive picture logo, making it easy to find others.
- Choose easier books at first to help build your child’s confidence
- Only move onto another series once your child is ready
- Ask the library staff for help
Beginner readers
These books have:
- short text matched up with bold illustration – colour or black and white
- large, clear print and well spaced text
- one or only a few words on each page
- repetitive vocabulary.
- text and illustrations in clearly defined areas of the page.
- helpful advice for parents and carers sometimes
- Leapfrog
- Reading corner grade 1
- Reading corner phonics grades 1 & 2
- Tadpoles
- Usborne first reading - levels 1 & 2
Early readers
These books have:
- a little more text than beginner series offering short, snappy sentences.
- easy repetitive words
- large, clear, well spaced print with simple punctuation
- lively black and white or colour illustrations to encourage discussion.
- stories ideal for shared reading
- helpful advice for parents and carers sometimes
Try these series
- Learn with Dr Seuss
- Hopscotch: adventures; histories; twisty tales; fairy tales; stories of religion; myths
- Reading corner grades 2 & 3
- Ready steady read levels 1 to 4
- Usborne first reading levels 3 & 4
- Zig Zag
Developing readers
These books have:
- stories featuring rhyme, rhythm and repetition
- clear easy-to-follow text including illustration on all or most pages
- more text with slightly longer sentences and full punctuation
- repetitive phrases to build children’s confidence
- clear type with familiar words, as well as some more challenging ones
- short chapters
Try these series
- Animal crackers
- Orchard colour crunchies
- Corgi pups
- Orchard crunchies
- Green bananas
- Spirals
- Happy families
- Start reading bands 5 to 9
- I am reading
- Walker starters
Confident Readers
These books have:
- stories designed to stretch fluent young readers
- a definite story line with beginning, middle and conclusion
- words that require close attention e.g. want/went/when or the/they/this
- a definite bias towards text with a few pictures interspersed
- longer chapters with harder sentences and more difficult vocabulary
- smaller print
Try these series:
- Blue bananas
- Seriously silly stories
- Chameleons
- Sprinters
- Colour young Puffin
- Tremors
- Comix
- Usborne young reading series 1,2
- Orchard super crunchies
- Walker stories
More challenging reads
These books have:
- longer, more developed stories to increase vocabulary and challenge understanding
- small print
- small spaces
- few or no pictures
- difficult/more complex vocabulary
- more complicated stories with harder concepts and more detail
- descriptive language
Try these series:
- Little animal ark
- Red bananas
- Skylarks
- Usborne young reading series 3
- Young Puffin
- Race further with reading