Best Books About Anger for Preschoolers (Ages 2–5)

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Mine was three and a half, and the shop was busy. He wanted a particular yoghurt, the kind with the picture on it, and we were in the wrong aisle for it. What happened next took about ninety seconds and I remember it in detail: the going-rigid, the shoe coming off, the woman behind us deciding to look at the shelf very carefully. I crouched down and tried the thing the internet told me to try, which was to ask him how he was feeling. He had no idea how he was feeling. He was four foot of weather.

That is the gap these books fill, and it is worth being clear about what the gap actually is before you spend any money.

Why your preschooler can't calm down yet

Look at what the CDC lists on its Learn the Signs. Act Early. milestone checklists and something jumps out. For 3 years, the social and emotional milestones are "calms down within 10 minutes after you leave her, like at a childcare drop off" and "notices other children and joins them to play". For 4 years they are things like "comforts others who are hurt or sad" and "likes to be a 'helper'". Managing your own anger does not appear on either list. The CDC defines a milestone as something most children, "75% or more", can do by a given age, so its absence is informative: nobody expects a preschooler to have this yet.

The same pages tell you what to do instead, and the advice is less about feelings talk than I expected. For a 3-year-old the CDC suggests you "talk about your child's emotions and give him words to help him explain how he's feeling" and "help your child manage stressful feelings by teaching him to take deep breaths, hug a favorite toy, or go to a quiet, safe place when he is upset". It also suggests setting "a few simple and clear rules that your child can follow, such as use gentle hands when playing", and showing him what to do instead when a rule gets broken.

Which is the whole case for reading about this. Every one of those four things is easier to hand a child inside a story, on a calm afternoon, than in aisle six. A book gives them the words before they need them, shows them a character doing the deep breath or the quiet corner, and lets you say "that's your Bombaloo feeling" instead of "use your words" to a child who has none. Ages below are a rough guide and children vary enormously.

1. Llama Llama Mad at Mama by Anna Dewdney

Baby Llama does not want to go to the Shop-O-Rama. He endures the trolley, the queue, the endless aisles, and then it all goes up: he throws things out of the cart and yells "I don't like it. I say NO." The reason this is the best preschool anger book I know is what Mama Llama does next. She does not win the argument and she does not lose her temper. She says she gets fed up with shopping too, and they tidy the mess together and finish the trip. Viking Books for Young Readers, September 2007, 40 pages, Amazon reading age 2 to 4 years. It rhymes hard enough that a three-year-old will be saying "mad at Mama" by the second reading, which is the point: the phrase becomes something they can say instead of scream. The limitation is that it is a shop and a tantrum and nothing else, so it will not help with anger at another child. View Llama Llama Mad at Mama on Amazon →

2. Sometimes I'm Bombaloo by Rachel Vail, illustrated by Yumi Heo

Katie Honors is usually Katie Honors. Then her brother knocks down her castle and she is not Katie any more, she is Bombaloo: fists instead of words, feet instead of sentences. Her mother picks her up and puts her in her room, and Katie sits there until she is Katie again, and then everyone has lunch. What makes this the strongest book on the list for a four or five-year-old is that it names the thing children find most frightening about their own rage, which is not that it is naughty but that it does not feel like them. Scholastic Paperbacks, February 2005, 32 pages, Amazon reading age 2 to 5 years. Our word for it stuck for about two years. Yumi Heo's illustrations are deliberately scribbly and a few children find them ugly; read a sample first if yours is fussy about pictures. View Sometimes I'm Bombaloo on Amazon →

3. When I Feel Angry by Cornelia Maude Spelman, illustrated by Nancy Cote

A young rabbit walks you through what anger does inside a body: the hot face, the loud voice, the wanting to hit. Then it offers a short list of things to do instead, including stopping, taking a breath and finding someone to tell. This is the most directly useful book here and also the least like a story, which is the trade-off. It is the closest thing in print to the CDC's own advice about giving a child words and a couple of calming moves, and 24 pages is short enough for a child who is already restless. Albert Whitman & Company, January 2000, part of The Way I Feel series, Amazon reading age 2 to 5 years. If you want one book that teaches the skill rather than describing the feeling, this is it. View When I Feel Angry on Amazon →

4. Mouse Was Mad by Linda Urban, illustrated by Henry Cole

Mouse is furious and tries to be angry the way everyone else is angry. Hare hops, Bear stomps, Hedgehog rolls, Bobcat screams. Mouse attempts each one and is hopeless at all of them, and the trying keeps knocking him over into the mud. In the end he stands completely still, and discovers that the standing still is the one he is good at, and the others are rather impressed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 2009, 40 pages. Worth knowing before you buy that the age guidance disagrees with itself here: Amazon's reading-age field says 2 to 4 years, while HarperCollins, which sells the paperback, says 4 to 7. Trust the publisher and treat this as one for the top of the preschool range. It is the sneakiest teaching on the list, because stillness arrives as a triumph rather than a rule from a grown-up, so if your four or five-year-old goes straight to the floor when cross, this is the one to buy. View Mouse Was Mad on Amazon →

5. When Sophie Gets Angry — Really, Really Angry… by Molly Bang

Sophie's sister takes her toy gorilla, Sophie kicks and screams and turns the colour of the page, and then she runs out of the house and up a beech tree and sits in it until the world comes back. Molly Bang does it almost entirely with colour: the moment of rage is a red-and-orange explosion, and the calm is green. Scholastic Bookshelf paperback, June 2004, 40 pages. The honest note for a preschool list is that Sophie solves it by going outside and climbing a tree on her own, which a three-year-old cannot do, so the useful transfer is the idea of going somewhere else rather than the specifics. Read it for how completely the pictures explain a feeling your child cannot describe yet. View When Sophie Gets Angry on Amazon →

6. Sharing Silver: the one about anger coming back to you

Bandit the dog steals honey from a beehive, gets stung for his trouble, and Silver the Super Pup walks him round the forest showing him what giving does. One stop on that walk is an anthill. Angry Ann the ant is insisting she was never caught in a game of chase, the other ants disagree, and within a page the whole hill is shouting and the game is over. Silver's explanation is the line our own children repeat: "When Ann gave out anger, anger came right back. Anger is like mud on a trampoline. Jump on it, and the mud splashes right onto you." For a four-year-old who has just made everybody cross and cannot work out why nobody will play, that picture does more than a conversation about feelings does.

“The world is like a mirror. It reflects back what you give.”

Sharing Silver: a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7. Written by us, and here for one page of it rather than the whole book. The note below says exactly which page, and what it leaves out.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

Here is where it fits. Sharing Silver is a book about giving and reciprocity, and anger occupies one page of its 24. The page does name the feeling, because the ant is called Angry Ann and Silver says the word out loud, but nothing in the book teaches a child to notice or name their own, and there is no calming down, no quiet corner and no deep breath. So it will not do the job that numbers one to five do. What it has is the consequence, told as a joke a small child laughs at, which is a different and genuinely useful angle on the same afternoon. You can read a sample first, and how Sharing Silver teaches managing anger goes through the trampoline idea properly.

7. Hands Are Not for Hitting by Martine Agassi, illustrated by Marieka Heinlen

The one to buy if the anger is arriving through hands. It is not a story at all: it states the rule once and then spends every remaining page on what hands are actually for, which is waving and painting and tickling and holding on in a car park. Free Spirit Publishing, board-book edition February 2002, 24 pages. Free Spirit publishes it two ways, as this board book for ages 1 to 4 and as an expanded paperback for ages 4 to 7, which makes the edition linked here the youngest book on the list. That bluntness is the feature. It gives you a phrase the whole house can use in the half-second before a hand lands, and it slots straight into the CDC's suggestion of one simple rule like "use gentle hands when playing". Do not expect it to be charming, and do not read it immediately after a hitting incident or it becomes a punishment. View Hands Are Not for Hitting on Amazon →

8. I Was So Mad by Mercer Mayer

Little Critter wants to do a string of ordinary things and is told no to all of them: keep the frogs in the bath, paint the house, take the goldfish out for a walk. He decides to run away from home, and then his friends ask him to come and play, and he goes instead. Random House Books for Young Readers, November 2000, 24 pages, Amazon reading age 2 to 4 years. It is here because it is the only book on the list where the anger is about nothing dramatic whatsoever, which is the honest texture of most preschool fury, and because the ending is not a moral. He simply stops being angry because something better turns up. Children find that enormously reassuring, and so did I. View I Was So Mad on Amazon →

What to do with the book once you own it

Read it when nothing is wrong. A book about anger produced in the middle of a meltdown is a telling-off with pictures, and a child in full flight cannot take in a story anyway. Days later, on a dull Tuesday, is when it goes in.

Then borrow the book's word. "Bombaloo" worked in our house for two years because it gave a four-year-old a label for something that frightened him, and a labelled feeling is one you can talk about on the way home. The CDC's read-aloud tip is worth stealing while you are at it: ask "what is happening in the picture?" and "what do you think will happen next?" rather than asking your child whether they ever behave like that.

One habit worth dropping, because I had it. Do not use the book as evidence. The moment "remember what Sophie did?" becomes a point you are scoring, the book stops being a safe place to put the feeling and becomes part of the argument.

How to choose between them

Pick by what the anger looks like in your house. Meltdowns in shops and car parks is Llama Llama Mad at Mama. Rage that frightens the child themselves is Sometimes I'm Bombaloo. Needing the actual words and a calming move is When I Feel Angry. Going straight to the floor is Mouse Was Mad. Anger that needs somewhere to go is When Sophie Gets Angry. Hitting, pushing or grabbing is Hands Are Not for Hitting. Cross about everything and nothing is I Was So Mad. And the child who has just made the whole room cross and cannot see their own part in it is Sharing Silver.

For the shelves either side of this one, best books about anger for kids is the same subject for a five to seven-year-old and runs to thirteen titles, children's books about feelings covers naming emotions before any one of them boils over, and best books about self-control is the waiting-and-stopping version. Away from the books, emotional regulation in preschoolers is the practical guide to this exact age, and raising a kind, sharing friend is the full guide it belongs to.

If the trouble is feelings in general rather than anger specifically, books about feelings for preschoolers covers the same age band and is ordered by how much each book asks of the child.