The books we're adding to help every class start the year together

Every August, before a single pupil walked through the door, I'd be sat with my class list working out who was who. Not just names and reading levels, but who was starting fresh at a new school, who might be anxious after six weeks away from routine, who had additional needs I wanted to understand properly before I ever stood in front of them. That planning never really felt optional. Getting it right in the first few weeks shapes how a class settles for the rest of the year.

What I didn't have back then was an easy way to bring my pupils into that same understanding. Explaining to a class of seven year olds why a classmate needs extra time, or what it actually means when a friend says they have ADHD, or how to make a new student feel like they belong on day one, usually fell to me trying to find the right words on the spot.

That's what our new Back to School collection is for.

We've just added a set of books to the Everybody Reads library built specifically around the topics that tend to come up hardest at this point in the year. Every title is generated at each child's own reading level, the same as everything else on the platform, so a book about anxiety or dyslexia isn't sitting above or below where a pupil is actually reading. It just meets them there.

Understanding a friend's diagnosis, in their own words

A few of the new titles put a diagnosis at the centre of the story rather than around the edges of it. ADHD is My Superpower and Dyslexia is My Superpower both follow a character living with that diagnosis, told from their point of view rather than as something happening to them. The idea is simple. When a classmate hears the story from inside a character's head rather than a teacher's explanation, it tends to land differently, and it gives the rest of the class language for something they might otherwise only half understand.

Fair Fix-it with Jonah follows a boy who uses a wheelchair, written the same way any other adventure story would be, rather than being a story about disability itself. Mara's Missing Mystery follows a character navigating the world with visual impairment, working out a mystery in her school library using instinct and confidence rather than sight. Noor's Big Science Show puts a young scientist front and centre running her own science fair.

None of these are issue books in the way that phrase usually gets used. They're just good stories, with characters that a lot of children in a classroom will recognise as closer to themselves than anything they've read before.

Settling in, and finding your voice

The Worry Notebook deals with anxiety in a way that gives younger readers a way to name what they're feeling, which matters a lot after a long summer away from routine and friends. New Friends, Same Us and Leila Has Something to Say both sit around belonging, being new, and finding your voice in a group that already knows each other. For any child starting at a new school this term, or any class welcoming someone new into it, these give a way into that conversation that doesn't put a single child on the spot.

Starting the conversation, not replacing it

None of this is meant to replace the conversations teachers already have with their class. It's meant to make them easier to start. A book gives a class a shared reference point, a way to talk about empathy, difference, or anxiety without a teacher having to introduce the topic cold, and without any one pupil feeling like the story is about them specifically. Every title sits in the library the same as any other book, so a teacher can build it straight into reading time without it needing to be a whole separate lesson.

As a former teacher, this is the part of Everybody Reads I'm proudest of. Reading a levelled book on the water cycle is useful. Giving a class of nine year olds a way to understand why their new classmate uses a wheelchair, or why their friend needs a bit longer to finish their work, or how it feels to walk into a school where you don't know anyone yet, that's the kind of thing I used to have to build from scratch every September. Now it's already there.

The full Back to School collection is live in the Everybody Reads library now. If you'd like a walkthrough for your school or want to see what's coming next, get in touch.