Reading Chest is a phonics book swapping subscription for children learning to read.

Reading Chest is a simple, child-friendly way to keep fresh reading material arriving at your doorstep. You choose a plan, pick your child’s reading level, and we send out a bundle of phonics-based reading books by post. We also include star charts, stickers, and activities (as well as certificates as they progress).

When your child has read them, just send them back in the pre-paid envelope and we’ll post out new ones. The frequency you can swap books is based on whether you have a Bronze, Silver, or Gold plan.

There’s no pressure, and no deadlines — just steady reading progress, book by book.

Yes, absolutely! When you initially sign up to Reading Chest, you will only be asked to select your child’s book band (reading level).  If you are happy to receive a selection of books from their book band, there is nothing more to do.

If you want to be more specific about the books you want, you can do this in your Reading Chest account area.

1. You can add titles to your ‘Favourites’ list which we will prioritise for you.
2. You can add titles to your ‘Book bin’ which we won’t send to you.
3. You can select particular reading schemes, or just fiction or non-fiction.

Books can be added to your ‘Favourites’ even if they are not in your book band – which might be useful for a school topic, or for trying out some more challenging books.

We have a helpful guide that should explain everything you need to know about book bands, along with an interactive tool to see what each band looks like (with sample pages from our books).

The best place to start is by taking a look at your child’s most recent book from school. It usually (but not always!) will have a book band or colour associated with it, that will correspond to the same colour on Reading Chest.

A rough guide by age would be as follows, but remember that every child is different, and everyone progresses at different stages!

• Ages 4-5: Pink, Red, Yellow
• Ages 5-6: Blue, Green, Orange
• Ages 6-7: Turquoise, Purple, Gold, White, Lime
• Ages 7-9: Extended

We’ll do our best to get your first shipment sent out the same day you join (depending on the time of day!), or the day after.

Most of our shipments are sent by Royal Mail 2nd Class post, which takes a couple of working days to reach you. We can’t guarantee a specific timeframe, but you should have your first books within 3-4 days of signing up (hopefully sooner!)