Usha Goswami's Reading List

"We all felt that this is such an appealing subject for children. This book has the kind of questions children will ask you about what’s going on in their body and so on. The content is very appealingly written, so it’s the kind of book you can imagine a child getting out from the bookcase and then getting completely engrossed in. We thought it was a great book. Yes, lots of disgusting facts, which children love. And the humour is there in the writing. It is a well-judged book, probably mainly for 8-11 year olds. This is the one we think the kids might pick, to be honest, it’s such an appealing topic."

"This is a terrific book. It’s one of the ones for the younger end, for kids age around 5-7. It has really exceptional design. You want to keep turning the pages with this book, the way they’ve made those little flaps. It’s all about what are germs, what are viruses, how do they get into my body, and what can I do about it? So it makes a scary topic acceptable and understandable. Yes, it’s a balanced picture. The explanations in it are very good. It’s very inspiring, really, for children when they can understand what germs are, and that some are good, some are bad. And this book feels very good in your hands, I would say."

"This is a great book. The picture of the tiger! I think any child would pick this book out of the shelf. Yes, they’re fantastic. He drew them all himself. It’s an amazing production, and very good information. It’s got the right anatomy, it’s got the Latin names, and it’s a really interesting way to present it. The idea that these animals are deadly is quite exciting and scary for children, isn’t it? And then you look in the book and you find they’re not all big tigers, some of them are little toads. That’s a good point. It makes you think about how to be deadly in a more analytical way. You might be an ant, but if you’re the fastest to strike then you’re going to get your prey. It has shades of Steve Backshall-type adventure and natural history television programmes about it, of going out there and exploring, but having it in a book. And it’s got really stunning illustrations. I would say this book is aimed at children age five and up."

"This one is also very beautifully done. It has a very nice set of illustrations and well-chosen content. It doesn’t repeat lots of stuff you already know about bugs, so I think it is going to inspire children. There are some things that are well known, like bees vomit out honey, but there are quite a few things in this book that I read for the first time. I learnt that a vinegar fly fell into some milk 6,000 years ago, and that’s what led to us having cheese and yogurt, and we’re still using those bacteria. A lot of the facts are really unusual, and they’ll engage children. And there is something about insects that children love to watch, especially when they’re really tiny. Bugs are all around us. This book makes you think about their place in the ecosystem and how helpful they are. Yes, I agree. We all thought it is quite an exceptional book. Everyone on the panel felt they learned new stuff by reading it. Of all the books on the shortlist, this is probably the one for the widest age range, from around 5-11. I do think getting kids reading is so important. The more you read, the better for your brain. And you probably process the information more deeply when you read it. Science is such a big topic. If you can come up with the right angle or perspective to get children reading about science from the youngest ages, then you’re doing something great. There are lots of children who grow up in homes with zero books, so you really want them to go into school and have books that they want to take out of that school library, and you want children to want to learn how to read. It’s super important whether your parent reads with you. Even if your mother can’t speak English, but she goes through a book you’ve chosen at the library and tells you in, say, Bengali what the pictures are, that still helps your reading, it’s still really important. So books in schools are really vital. We were trying to have topics that were treated in a fresh way. You always get books on dinosaurs , but we wanted to look at a range of topics. AI and coding and climate change are areas of science that are growing in importance but, in my personal view, the books we looked at in these areas weren’t really getting into the topic from a young child’s point of view, so they didn’t go on the shortlist. I enjoyed being on the judging panel for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize a lot. The books you get sent are gorgeous. Some of them didn’t cover enough breadth to make it on the shortlist, maybe they were about one animal species or just one aspect of something, but they were still gorgeous books. It’s an honour to judge a prize like this, and I enjoyed it immensely."