Children’s nonfiction, genre and cross-curricular books

Children’s genre, nonfiction and cross-curricular books

Curated children’s book lists selected by genre and nonfiction subject for cross-curricular teaching. Are you looking for great books to support your primary KS1 or KS2 teaching areas?

Below are our recommended collections for cross-curricular projects. These book list suggestions aim to cover all curriculum subjects and themes and include a variety of genres, including poetry, reading for pleasure, fiction and narrative nonfiction. We’re adding new genres and nonfiction subjects every week, and we hope these lists of quality texts will help teachers and librarians to find useful books for classrooms and school libraries.

Genre and nonfiction books are a great way to encourage children to read for pleasure, delve into a subject on their own terms, investigate areas they are interested in for deeper home learning, and develop a personal attachment to a curriculum area. Books for cross-curricular teaching also allow pupils to appreciate how cultures, civilisations, movements and philosophies span disciplines in real life and are not limited to discrete areas of learning.

Not only that, but when a child reads a book about something they are enthusiastic about, suddenly it no longer seems like schoolwork. Using classroom displays of genre-books, and highlighting non-fiction corners of the library can help to motivate students to read independently and develop preferred literary interests.

The lists are updated and revised regularly to make sure books are up-to-date and relevant to the UK National Curriculum. Each recommended book includes a description and suggestions for classroom use. For each genre, there’s also a hand-picked selection of useful resources, links and free downloadables.

Our genre and cross-curricular booklists are created for UK teachers and school librarians who need reliable texts for topics, themes and classroom libraries, with contributions from subject specialists on our booklist curation panel. We add and refresh lists regularly to help schools find strong fiction, nonfiction, poetry and narrative nonfiction for teaching and reading for pleasure. For age-specific recommendations, start with KS2 reading lists or KS3 reading lists.

For more nonfiction and ideas, see our list of magazines for children and teens.

By Tom Tolkien. This page was last updated on May 2nd, 2025.