RTRP Books
Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils produces three high-quality and diverse booklists for teachers each academic year which are chosen by a panel of experts. The book lists consist of five books each and there is one for Lower-KS2 (Years 3/4), one for Upper-KS2 (Years 5/6) and one for KS3 (Years 7–9).
Any teachers are welcome to read and share these lists, but they are predominantly used by teachers in our RTRP Independent Partner network of teacher’s book groups who read and discuss the books with their peers before sharing with their pupils all over the country.
Our Selection Process
Selection Criteria
The five RTRP books are chosen for each age range according to the following criteria:
- Suitable for the age of the children
- High-quality texts (linguistically and/or thematically) that require some level of teacher mediation and inspire rich booktalk in the classroom
- Range of genres and writing styles (in terms of fantasy vs real world, character-driven vs language vs plot-driven)
- Diverse representation both in terms of author and protagonist
- Three must be published in the last two years
- One must be published pre-2000
- One must be a visual narrative where the pictures and text are interdependent to offer multi-layered meanings
Our RTRP Panellists strive to strike a balance between all these things across the academic year.
The books are presented below in an order which our panellists feel best reflects the structure of the academic year, but you are welcome to read and use the books in any order.
Our Panelists
The booklists below were chosen by three panels each made up of children’s literature and education experts from academics, book critics, teachers, librarians and translators. The panels were chaired by Cheltenham Festivals’ Head of Learning and Participation (KS3) and one of our Learning and Participation Managers (Lower & Upper- KS2).
You can download the biographies of our fantastic 2023-2024 panellists below.
Please see below the booklists for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Check back in July 2024 for the 2024-2025 booklists.
Lower Key Stage 2
Upper Key Stage 2
