There's a version of the banded home library that involves spreadsheets, a label maker and a Sunday you don't get back. This is the other version: enough order that the right book surfaces at reading time, loose enough that books still feel like treats rather than syllabus.
You don't need a box per band. You need three: now (the current band and one below — solo-reading territory), soon (a band or two above, for reading together), and everything else (outgrown books and gifts-for-later, out of daily rotation). Band labels earn their keep inside the "now" box, where they let a child pick independently from books that will all basically work — which is the entire trick of home reading: choice within a winnable range.
Stick labels where a browsing child sees them — top corner of the front cover, or spine-top for shelf-stored books. Do the big sort once (banding mystery books is its own small art — guide here), and after that the system maintains itself at put-away time. If a book keeps escaping its box, a child is voting with their hands; the box is wrong, not the child.
Children re-reading "easy" books are building fluency, speed and the sensation of being good at this — which is the fuel for everything harder. Keep the band below current level in the "now" box on purpose, and never present it as the baby box. Equally, the picture books and joke books and dinosaur encyclopaedias that fit no band belong in reach forever: banding organises the practice shelf, not the love of books.
Moving up a band is worth thirty seconds of ceremony — the child moves the books between boxes themselves, new labels go on anything joining the rotation, and somebody remarks that the "soon" box just got interesting. Small ritual, real motivation, zero laminating.
General guidance, August 2026. Your child's teacher sets the level; the boxes just serve it. CAAC.