As celebrations for the National Year of Reading 2026 get going, English Consultant Julie Sargent shares her pick of five picture books to inspire your KS1 learners…

In the current climate, there is a clear and welcome focus on securing key foundational skills for our younger children. Automaticity in both word reading and transcriptional skills helps children access a wide range of texts and share their ideas through writing.

Rich, authentic texts are a vital part of provision; they promote the pleasure and purpose of reading, deepening understanding of texts and exploring the craft of the writer. Yet in primary schools, it seems as if the purpose of reading is to answer questions correctly about a text, and writing is about producing a ‘type’ of text. The reality is that we read to escape, relate, explore and discover, and when writing, we think far more about what we want to say, why we want to say it and how best to get our meaning across.   

Working alongside many schools and trusts, I often talk about the importance of ‘creating writers, not writing’; the same applies to reading – we need to create real ‘readers’. High-quality texts allow us to do exactly that.

At Opening Doors, we believe challenge is for everyone, and access is key. By using high challenge, low threat strategies, every child can develop fully as a reader and a writer, including our younger learners.  

Here are five texts to get you started…

The Last Wolf by Mini Grey
Little Red ventures into the woods to catch a wolf in this humorous twist on the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood, featuring important environmental messages.

Ideas to engage and challenge:  

• When predicting, young children often focus on getting it right. However, authors often deliberately lead readers towards one thing before surprising them with something quite unexpected. Here, Little Red stalks what looks very much like a rabbit, but turns out to be something quite different. The reader is caught out! Another potential creature is spotted. Will the reader be caught out again, or will they be wise; there is more to the image than meets the eye? As readers, we wonder, notice, speculate, connect and take pleasure in being surprised and shocked as events unfold. Explore those ‘red herrings’ and the enjoyment of getting it wrong. Can we spot ‘red herrings’ in other stories? As we develop as writers, maybe we can include some?
• Why do we sense impending danger as Little Red travels through the forest? Darkening pictures, word choices, strange sounds, the size of our heroine, unanswered questions and broken up sentences all add to the tension. Is there danger? Or is this another ‘red herring’?
• Relish the vocabulary; alongside some great words to explore (‘supplies’, ‘lurked’ etc.), there are also some unusual and potentially unfamiliar phrases: ‘the good old days’, ‘world was awash’, ‘a square meal’, ‘pickings are slim’.
• Take making connections to other texts one step further. This author has made very deliberate links with another text. What connotations can be made by the inclusion of certain characters, the play on a name, the use of colour or a well-known phrase? All this brings to mind prior knowledge and perhaps more ‘red herrings’ – wolves should be dangerous! Over time, you might like to spot other stories that play on these links. Good Little Wolf by Nadia Shireen and A Tale of Two Beasts by Fiona Robertson are good examples.
• And why not have some playful fun with writing? Perhaps children could create a lunchbox for the wolf for Little Red’s next visit? Maybe they could write about a wolf chasing/hunting a sandwich/chocolate bar for their dinner?

The Secret Forest by Sandra Dieckmann
This interactive text invites readers to spot hidden secrets while journeying through the forest, meeting creatures and discovering fascinating information about life in the forest.

Ideas to engage and challenge:

• The author continually engages with the reader, asking them to do something, notice something or on one occasion, sing an owl duet! Command sentences instruct the reader to notice something or warn of imminent danger. To be a great writer, sentences are crafted for the reader; we can show them how this is done.
• Adverbs of time are often covered in KS1. How many pieces of writing do we see that use the words first, then, next etc.?  This book contains some delightful phrases that show the time of day: ‘in the twilight of late evening’, and ‘the morning sun is rising’.  Why not collate these, model new ones and generate some together? They can be used orally to talk about time and events. Developing this over time is likely to lead into natural application within writing.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers
A humorous tale with an important message: read books, don’t eat them. Henry loves eating books and gets cleverer with each bite, but it doesn’t end well. He learns that reading is the better way (or does he?).

Ideas to engage and challenge:

• Explore engaging ways that stories are shared. The opening paragraph connects the author and reader through a shared interest and implies something slightly different about our main character. Sentence openers weave the magic of stories: ‘It all began quite by mistake…’, ‘Then, after a while, and almost by accident…’.  Note other books that acknowledge the reader, other openers that build the story. These could be used in any retelling or creation of stories.
• Alongside fascinating illustrations, the author uses unexpected features – a labelled diagram to explain a process, a footnote to explain an unfamiliar word – typically seen in non-fiction. Discuss where else these features might be found and explore Jeffers’ other books to see if you can find any similar features.
• Take some time to look at the blurb. What is a disclaimer? Why might the reader need a disclaimer? The short, one-line reviews are very cleverly worded, playing on words like ‘devour’ and ‘mouthwatering’, exploiting the meaning of these words in different contexts. Try ‘digest’ and ‘feast’.  How can they be used in a non-food context?
• Explore endings with a twist. We discover Henry, quietly reading a book, but what about that last line, and the mysterious poster/book? And what has happened to the back cover? Why might an author do this at the end of a book? What other stories have a ‘twist’ at the end?

The Big Book of the Blue by Yuval Zommer
This engaging, informative non-fiction text explores the ocean through fascinating illustrations and cleverly presented facts. With fiction, we often respond to the text by exploring our reactions; why not explore the delight of discovery alongside knowledge?

Ideas to engage and challenge:

• The first subheading on each page asks a question a reader might wonder about, often addressing potential misconceptions such as ‘Is a jellyfish made from jelly?’ Other subheadings use clever techniques such as playing on words: ‘In for the krill’ and ‘Good eye-dea’. There’s a great opportunity here for collecting these and linking them to the original phrase, thus developing knowledge of well-used phrases and idioms. You can also explore short, snappy subheadings, the use of alliteration and how the first subheading flows directly into the opening sentence (‘A crab says hello by…’), leaving the reader intrigued to read on.
• Another effective way of sharing information is using the language of comparison. Understanding is developed through showing a slight difference or an unusual link with something the reader is likely to know about. Pick out phrases such as ‘slippery as butter’, ‘looks like a flower’ to demonstrate this. Make links with writing; if your reader didn’t know what something was, what comparisons could you make? 
• The Fishy Phrases page provides an excellent example for teaching children subject-specific words and how these ‘expert’ words are used in information texts. Perhaps children could revisit other pages in the book and see if they can spot any ‘expert’ words!

I’ve yet to do the sardine challenge (posed for the reader at the beginning of the book) but I’m sure many children will be keen to have a go!

Nimesh the Adventurer by Ranjit Singh, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini
A glorious text exploring the delight of using your imagination to have adventures wherever you are. It might be a school corridor, or is it the ocean depths – a place for daring adventures!

Finally, below is just a taster of what you can do with this book, as I’ve used it to create our first ever Opening Doors unit for reception and KS1. There are opportunities for:

• Oral, creative retelling of journeys
• Creating illustrations to ‘hint’ at adventures
• Building sentences to explore concepts
• Consideration to play and enhanced continuous provision
• A range of ‘wings to fly’ opportunities, accessible for all learners

If you’d like to explore this unit in full and deepen your understanding of the Opening Doors approach, you can purchase the unit via TES, and read more about Opening Doors.

Julie Sargent has over 10 years’ experience of working across the whole of the primary sector as an English Consultant. This includes developing bespoke CPD for individual schools, multi-academy trusts and local authorities. She has a particular interest in Early Years/KS1 and using high-quality texts to promote and develop all aspects of English. Read more about Julie, and follow her @Julie_Sargent1