Curriculum
Gareth Snow | Assistant Principal
Choosing the Right Books for Your Child: Building Stronger Readers at Home
At Skye Primary School, we know that reading regularly at home is one of the most powerful ways to boost children’s learning. But with so many books available, how do you choose the right ones—books that aren’t just enjoyable, but also help children become stronger, deeper readers?
One helpful approach is based on the “Five Plagues of Reading”, a framework developed by literacy expert Doug Lemov. These “plagues” aren’t negative—in fact, they describe the kinds of challenging books that help young readers grow.
They are:
- Archaic Language – Books with old-fashioned vocabulary and sentence structure help children understand literature from the past (like fairy tales or classics).
- Non-Linear Time Sequences – Stories that jump around in time stretch memory and comprehension, encouraging readers to make connections across timelines.
- Narratively Complex Texts – Books with multiple narrators or points of view build empathy and critical thinking.
- Figurative or Symbolic Texts – Stories with deeper meanings or metaphors help children learn to read “between the lines.”
- Resistant Texts – Books that don’t give up their meaning easily encourage re-reading, discussion and perseverance.
By making sure your child experiences books from each of these categories over the year, you’re helping them practise the same skills they’ll need to tackle more complex reading in high school and beyond.
Book Suggestions for Each Year Level
(A mix of enjoyable and challenging reads for home reading time) - See link below for a far more extensive list.
| Year | Example Titles |
|---|---|
| Foundation–Year 1 | The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Voices in the Park, Grandad’s Island, Chester, The Stinky Cheese Man |
| Year 2 | Aesop’s Fables, Black and White, Fantastic Mr Fox, Owl Babies, Mirror (Jeannie Baker) |
| Year 3 | Charlotte’s Web, Fortunately the Milk, The Witches, The Iron Man, Cloud Busting |
| Year 4 | The Railway Children, The Butterfly Lion, Podkin One-Ear, The Tunnel, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick |
| Year 5 | Tom’s Midnight Garden, Time Travelling with a Hamster, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, The Highwayman, Skellig |
| Year 6 | A Christmas Carol, Holes, Wonder, The Arrival, The Raven |
How You Can Help at Home
- Encourage your child to try different types of books—not just the ones that feel easy or familiar.
- Ask them questions like: “Why do you think the author told the story this way?” or “What could this character or object really represent?”
- Re-read trickier passages together and talk about what’s confusing. This builds stamina and problem-solving skills.
- Visit your local library or ask your child’s teacher for more ideas linked to the “5 Plagues” model.
By helping children read across a range of styles and structures, we prepare them not only for high school but for a lifetime of thoughtful, joyful reading.
How Skye Primary is Using These Books
At Skye, we’ve carefully selected texts from Doug Lemov’s Reading Reconsidered reading spine and other sources (OCHRE) and integrated them into our whole-school approach to reading comprehension. These texts have been purposefully chosen to give all students regular exposure to the “five plagues” so that they can practise the exact reading skills they’ll need in secondary school and across all subject areas.
During reading sessions, students explore these books deeply through teacher-led discussions, vocabulary unpacking, and targeted comprehension tasks. By engaging with texts that challenge their thinking—whether it's decoding archaic language in Charlotte’s Web, unpacking symbolic meaning in The Tunnel, or tracking multiple timelines in Holes—students are learning to read more actively, interpretively, and independently.
This approach ensures that students are not just learning to read, but reading to learn—engaging with stories that stretch their thinking, grow their vocabulary, and prepare them for the more complex texts ahead.
Further information can be found in this PDF and it also provides an extensive list of books you may wish to borrow or buy: