In recent years publishing for children has become a growth area. We hope that this list will help you and your children and teenagers plunge in and develop your own taste and own likes and dislikes. This list will be regularly amended and updated, and your suggestions are very welcome - it is an acorn that we hope will grow into an oak. New titles will be reviewed once a month on the Guardian's Parents page, beginning on Wednesday March 29. On a practical note, the age groupings fit roughly into the way booksellers tend to arrange their children's departments, but they are not set in stone.
Children develop at different rates and learn to read at different rates.
The books selected have not been chosen on any criteria other than that we have read and enjoyed them and think you and your children might too. They have not been selected because they have any particular educational value, tie-in with the National Curriculum or might help your child learn to read, although some will probably do all these things. These books are not about fact gathering, but about finding out about the world around us in the widest sense and sharing in the pleasure of that discovery.