Free book advice
From picking a perfect gift book to developing your child's reading skills, inspiring a reluctant reader to exciting a stroppy teenager, our Book Adviser is here to help. As an educational consultant and a mum of two, not to mention an expert on DK books, she's the perfect person to offer all sorts of book advice.

Here are our latest Book Adviser Q&A's:

Q. I'm trying to find a list of the Big Books that you publish for use in reception classes in primary schools. Or a list of Eyewitness Readers for the same age children. I can find a list of 22 Eyewitness texts, but they all seem to be for Key Stage 1 or 2. I know you do publish Big Books - I have some of them e.g. On the Farm, and it would be helpful to have a complete list as I am developing new teaching materials for use with reception classes and should like to include recommending Big Books. Can you help? If possible, please e-mail me a list to this address.

A. The Big Books are no longer in print, but we can help with other material for Reception-aged children. The Watch me grow series is specially written for younger children and aims to help them understand how animals grow and change, their habitats and diets. They are excellent first nature/science titles. (Titles available: butterfly, bear, duckling, frog, penguin, rabbit, elephant, kitten, farm animals and puppy.) For a day is a series of books that encourages role-play and rewards children's curiosity about the jobs that people do. (Titles available: builder, doctor, farmer, fire fighter, astronaut, ballerina.) Nellie Shepherd's Art Classes are great fun and thoroughly tested for use with very young children. For ideas on how to use these series, go to www.dk.com/schools and download our free resources for Reception.

Q. My son is 6 years old. He goes to a private school. They are breaking up for 10 weeks. I wonder if you could advise about any reading material, Maths and written English I could do with him. He is reading level 4 at school. He will be doing key stage 1 next year.

A. We have a range of material for children at Key Stage 1: DK Readers provide excellent support for children who are just learning to read. The simple texts enable younger children to read about subjects that interest them. Our Carol Vordermann books support school work at both Key stage 1 and Key stage 2 and are written to reflect current classroom teaching.
Over the holidays, your son may prefer to develop his reading and English skills while learning about other things that interest him. Our Eye Wonder series is packed with fascinating information about Inventions, Human Body, Big Cats, and many, many more subjects.

Q. I am a principal of the private bilingual kindergarten for international kids - mostly Czech, who are educated only in English. We are located in the town Hradec Kralove in Czech Republic. There are some Scottish and English children in our city and no English schools so we would like to open them a mini class based on the British curriculum. Most of the kids are at the age of 5 so Key Stage One, but there is also one girl who is 11. We would like to help them and have some American qualified elementary school teachers but we have no experience with the British curriculum. Could you please help us and recommend us the books we will need for these children?

A. There are lots of resources on the Internet that will help you to plan for your English-speaking pupils. A good place to start is dk.com/schools. We have links to education websites where you can research the curricula for England and Scotland; we also have lesson plans to support the English National Curriculum and the National Literacy Strategy.

Key books to help you are the Carol Vorderman series: English Made Easy, Maths Made Easy and Science made Easy; Eyewitness Guides; Eye Wonder series; e.explore series and e.encyclopedia. DK Readers are very simple books about interesting subjects.

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