Best Anti-Bullying Books for Kids (Ages 3–7)

Super Silver Academy is reader-supported. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no extra cost to you.

These are books we have read at home, not a list assembled from other lists. I went looking for them after a parents' evening where the phrase anti-bullying was used about nine times and nobody said what a five-year-old is supposed to actually do. That is the gap. A small child can repeat "bullying is wrong" perfectly and still stand at the edge of a playground doing nothing, because knowing a rule and knowing what your body should do next are not the same skill.

There is one finding that changed how I read these aloud. Researchers at York University and Queen's University in Canada put microphones and cameras on school playgrounds and watched what really happened during bullying, rather than asking children about it afterwards. Other children were present for 88 percent of the episodes they recorded. Those children stepped in during 19 percent of them. And when one of them did step in, the bullying stopped in 57 percent of cases. It was a single study, published in Social Development in 2001 by Hawkins, Pepler and Craig, so hold the exact numbers loosely. Hold the shape of it tightly. The audience is nearly always there, it nearly always does nothing, and when it does something it works about half the time.

So the child these books are for is usually not the one in trouble. It is yours, standing three feet away. Each one below shows a different version of stepping in, because a shy child and a loud child will not use the same one.

1. Sharing Silver: the one told from the troublemaker's side

Bandit is the dog nobody wants at their party. The story opens with him raiding a beehive and getting stung for it, and Silver the Super Pup does not lecture him. He walks him round Friendship Forest and lets him watch instead. Benny the beaver builds a waterwheel that ends up serving everyone. Olivia the owl gives her music away and the forest gives back. Greedy Gus keeps the lot and sits on his pile by himself. Bandit works out the pattern before anyone spells it out for him.

“Every mistake is a chance to grow stronger.”

Sharing Silver: a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7. Best anti-bullying pick because it is written from the point of view of the character who is being unkind, and it lets him change without ever shaming him for it.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

Here is why that matters more than it looks. Nearly every anti-bullying book on a school shelf asks a child to identify with the victim, and children who are being unkind quietly opt out of that story, because they do not recognise themselves in it. Bandit they recognise straight away. He is not evil, he is bored and a bit greedy and he is having a lot of fun until it stops being fun. My son laughed at him for six pages and then went quiet. Sharing Silver is also the one that answers the question children ask when you tell them to be kind to the mean kid, which is why would I, and Silver's answer is practical rather than moral. The animals who help have helpers everywhere. The one who hoards sits alone on a hill. You can read a sample of Sharing Silver first, and how Sharing Silver teaches kindness takes the same beats more slowly.

2. Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry

Stick and Stone are both alone until Pinecone starts on Stone, calling him names in a playground of small round things. Stick speaks up. That is the whole moment, one friend saying something out loud, and the friendship starts there rather than ending there. Later a storm carries Stick off and Stone goes and gets him back. Tom Lichtenheld's pictures are spare and funny, the rhyme is short enough for a three-year-old, and the reason it leads the third-party list is that stepping in here takes about four words. A shy child can picture themselves doing it. Best for three to six. View Stick and Stone on Amazon →

3. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig

Brian is not pushed or called names. He is simply never picked, never invited, never noticed, and Patrice Barton draws him in grey while the rest of the class is in colour. Then a new boy, Justin, is laughed at over the food in his lunchbox, and Brian is the one who writes him a note. As their friendship grows Brian gains colour on the page. This is the book for the quieter kind of cruelty, the sort that leaves no marks and gets missed by every adult in the building, and it makes the point that including somebody is itself the intervention. Best for five to eight, and it pairs with when your child has no friends. View The Invisible Boy on Amazon →

4. Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller

A girl watches Tanisha spill grape juice down her dress and get laughed at. She says she likes the purple dress. Tanisha runs off anyway. The rest of the book is that girl turning the question over: what does being kind actually mean, and does a small thing count when it did not fix anything. Jen Hill's illustrations follow her thinking out into ripples. I use this one when my daughter says she tried and it did not work, because it is the only book here that sits with the failed attempt instead of tidying it up. Best for four to seven. View Be Kind on Amazon →

5. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum loves her name until the first day of school, when Victoria decides it is too long and points out that she is named after a flower. The teasing is horribly accurate: it is not violent, it is a group of children finding something funny at somebody's expense day after day. What turns it is Mrs. Twinkle, the music teacher, whose own name is Delphinium and who is planning to name her baby Chrysanthemum. Read this one for the crowd rather than for Victoria. Children hear exactly how the giggling spreads, which is the mechanism that makes this kind of teasing hurt. Best for four to seven. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →

6. Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller

Mr. Rabbit has otters moving in next door and no idea how to get along with them. Mr. Owl gives him the golden rule and the rest is a loud, joke-stuffed run through what that means in practice: be honest, be friendly, share, apologise, do not be rude. It is the prevention book on the list rather than a bullying story, and it is the one to read before term starts rather than after something has happened. The puns are relentless and small children find them hilarious. Best for four to seven, and it sits well next to kindness activities for kids. View Do Unto Otters on Amazon →

How to choose between them

Pick by which child you have in front of you. If yours is the one being unkind, or drifting along with the child who is, read Sharing Silver. If they want to help and freeze, read Stick and Stone, because the helping in it is four words long. If the trouble at their school is exclusion rather than aggression, read The Invisible Boy. If they tried something kind and it did not work, read Be Kind. If they are being teased about a name, a lunchbox, a pair of shoes, read Chrysanthemum. And if nothing has happened yet and you want it to stay that way, read Do Unto Otters in the week before school starts.

Then give them the words. This is the part that gets skipped, and without it the reading does not carry. Pick two short lines your child can say while their heart is going: stop, that is not kind, and come and play with us. Say them out loud together in the kitchen until they are boring. Add the fallback so they always have a second move, which is walk away and go and tell an adult, and make sure they know that choosing the fallback is not failing. A child who has rehearsed a sentence is far likelier to use it than a child who has only agreed with a principle.

Worth being straight about the limits. A book will not stop bullying that is already happening, and it is not a substitute for talking to the school. If your child is the one being hurt right now, helping a child who's being bullied is the more useful page, and our wider list of children's books about bullying includes the ones written for the child on the receiving end. For the groundwork underneath all of this, teaching a child empathy and best books about kindness for elementary are where I would go next.