Covid-19 / Coronavirus update
November 2020 We are still receiving and reading emails, mail and website messages; but we are not able to answer every message. We are currently not operating phone calls or using social media for messaging. Please use our contact form or email for all messages.
Book recommendations on this website link to Amazon.co.uk. Amazon has a regularly updated information page regarding ordering. We’ve not experienced any issues with orders to date.
Book reviews. We’re still accepting and receiving books for review from established contacts, but we’re not able to take on any new contacts at the moment. Also, we are now collecting mail every 72 hours, and we’re now forwarding copies to reviewers on a weekly, not daily, basis.
To contact The School Reading List website, please use the form below.
Before you click send, please have a look at our answers to frequently asked questions.
Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
Can I copy your lists? / Do you have printable versions of your lists?
No – and here’s why. We are happy for any school or organisation to link to our website and book list pages, but please don’t copy our book descriptions or other content – this is a copyright issue. We write all our own reviews – please respect our hard work! We are protected by Copyscape and Pixsy who alert us to any problems and infringement notice emails are generated and sent out automatically to websites and hosts. At this time, we cannot offer downloadable versions of our lists since image licensing arrangements and search engine guidelines prohibit that. In short, when our lists are copied, Google stops sending traffic to our site. If that is allowed to persist for any length of time, there would be no more website, no more reviews, and no more lists! Please bear in mind that our site is viewable for free and without a subscription, so please play fair and don’t copy.
Can I quote one of your reviews for book publicity or journalism?
Yes, we are happy for bona fide book publishers, authors, illustrators, publicists, literary agents and print journalists to quote limited excerpts of our reviews for marketing and editorial purposes, in print or online.
How can I get my book on your list? / Can I send you a copy of my book?
We look at all suggestions and add books that have excellent feedback from young readers and teachers. We consider books that have been published by both established publishing houses and self-published titles. Please check our Covid notice for our current position regarding review copies, otherwise do contact us if you have a book you would like us to consider. Please note, due to the volume of books we receive each term, we cannot review every book that is sent to us. We do try to provide a review on Goodreads for books that we don’t feature on this site. Also, we can only feature books that are widely available from bookshops and popular online outlets.
Why do you not have X, Y, or Z on a year group list?
The books selected on our year group lists have been picked because we’ve seen repeated and consistent feedback from a range of different school settings around the UK to indicate that children enjoy them, that children can relate to them, that children can empathise with the characters and settings, and that educators find them useful for literacy and English teaching. When we place a book on a year group list we are effectively saying to schools – across all regions of the UK – that we think this is a book that would work well in a school library, classroom library or for group reading. School budgets are often limited, and sets of books can cost a lot of money, so we take great care to pick titles that have a wide appeal and a high volume of positive feedback. For more focussed interests and specific genres, please see our topic book lists.
How do you choose books to recommend for a topic book list?
For topic book lists, we’re looking for a collection of titles that represent a cross-curricular topic area across the primary (and sometimes early secondary) age ranges. This might be a specific area such as ‘dinosaurs’, a subject with clear curriculum links, such as ‘the weather’, a hard to fill shelf for the school library, such as ‘Hobbies – 790.13’, or a collection of books that can be boxed and used as a mobile resource in a school, such as “The Vikings“.
How do you choose your Books of the Month?
We receive advanced review copies from publishers and publicists, we read relevant trade magazines, we keep an eye out for new titles in publisher’s catalogues, we receive solicited and sometimes unsolicited production copies of books from authors and we track viral threads relating to children’s literature on social media.
Can I order class sets of books for my school?
Yes, we’ve added functionality to allow bulk orders, ordering complete lists and overseas orders. If you need books for your school, a birthday or Christmas presents. Our bulk buy page makes it easy to order complete sets of reading lists & multiple copies for class sets.
Can I buy all or most of the books on a list at once?
Yes, this is possible by using the features on our bulk orders page.
I'm not in the UK. Can I order books to be delivered to another country?
Yes, on our international orders page we’ve selected a collection of our most popular books and lists; and on our bulk order page we have links to all our books and lists for overseas ordering.
Do you have any other website or resources I can look at?
Yes, we run a sister site – K-12 School Reading List – that curates lists for US grade schools, our editor runs a wide-ranging series of topic book lists, and – from time to time – we help promote innovative and interesting educational startups that we think deserve a wider audience.
Do you support local independent bookshops?
Yes we do. We have an extensive range of books available on uk.bookshop.org, an organisation that gives “a matching 10% to independent bookshops” on each sale, “75% of profit margin to stores, publications (and) authors” and offers a facility for you, the purchaser, to “find a specific local bookshop to support”. There are more details here.
Can I write a review for the School Reading List?
Yes. If you are an experienced teacher, school librarian or children’s author, please contact us using this page. Please note, we are not able to offer or receive payment for reviews.
Can I advertise on the School Reading List website?
We are not taking on any display, agency, targeted or social advertising on this website at the current time. It is our policy not to use Ad Networks, in line with our commitment to not storing or tracking personal data.
Do you arrange giveaways, blog tours, sweepstakes or competitions?
We are committed to not storing any personal user data or tracking data, so at this time, we don’t run competitions of our own through this website. However, we do recommend carefully vetted competitions run by trusted third parties on our competition pages. We look to attract new parents, teachers and schools to our recommendations, and for that reason, we don’t run giveaways, blog tours, sweepstakes on this website or social media. Contrary to popular belief, extensive research has demonstrated that these marketing practices (which often require extensive storage of personal and demographic data, and can lead to problematic compliance issues on social platforms) don’t in fact reach new users or increase meaningful engagement. We prefer to use our time to create new and useful content. From time to time we donate advance review copies of books to schools.
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Please click here: About The School Reading List
