Best Children's Books About Being a Good Friend (Ages 3–7)

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A quick word on how this list is ordered, because it is not by age or by prettiness. Ask a five-year-old what a good friend does and you will get "be nice" and then a long pause. Being nice is not an instruction anyone can follow. What a child can follow is a specific move, and there are only a handful that matter at this age: listen, notice, stand next to someone, turn up when it is dull, go first. Each book below is here because it shows one of those clearly enough that you can point at it. Pick the one your child is missing rather than the one with the best cover.

1. Sharing Silver — best for the child who waits to be chosen

Bandit is a dog who takes from everyone in Friendship Forest and gives nothing back, and he cannot understand why nobody wants him around. What Sharing Silver does differently is refuse to tell him off. Silver the Super Pup walks him round the forest instead and shows him how the place works: Olivia's music, Benny's waterwheel, everyone quietly looking after whoever looks after them. Bandit works out the rule on his own, which is the only way a four-year-old ever really takes it.

That rule is the reason this one sits at the top. Every other book here teaches a friendship move a child makes once someone is already in front of them. This is the one that gets them to move first, before there is any guarantee it will be returned, and that turns out to be the hard part for a lot of children. If yours hovers at the edge of the group waiting to be invited in, this is the story to read. Written for ages three to seven, and short enough to get through twice in a sitting.

“The kindest animals have the most friends, and those who help the most have helpers everywhere.”

Sharing Silver is a superhero training story about sharing, kindness and giving, written for ages 3 to 7. The book on this list that starts the friendship rather than repairing one.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

You can read a sample of Sharing Silver first to hear the voice, and if the problem is getting a friendship started at all rather than keeping one going, our list of the best books about making friends is the better door in.

2. The Rabbit Listened — by Cori Doerrfeld

Taylor builds something magnificent out of blocks and it falls down. The animals arrive one at a time with advice: shout about it, laugh it off, knock something else down to get even. Taylor wants none of it. Then the rabbit comes over, says nothing at all, and simply sits closer and closer until Taylor is ready to talk. It is the clearest picture of what a good friend does in a bad moment that you will find in a book this short, and it earns second place because most children, and most adults, get this one wrong by trying to help. Ages two to six, and it works as comfort as well as instruction. View The Rabbit Listened on Amazon →

3. Be Kind — by Pat Zietlow Miller

Tanisha spills grape juice down her new dress, the class laughs, and the girl telling the story wants to help but has no idea how. That is the whole book: a child turning the phrase "be kind" over and over, trying to work out what it means when you are standing right there and the moment is passing. Jen Hill's illustrations keep it gentle. It is the best answer here to the child who genuinely wants to do the right thing and freezes, because it treats that freeze as normal rather than as a failure. Preschool and up. View Be Kind on Amazon →

4. Chrysanthemum — by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum loves her name until her first day at school, when Victoria decides it is far too long and the giggling starts. Henkes is exact about how this actually goes: it is not one big cruelty, it is a drip, and it happens in front of children who say nothing. Worth reading with your eyes open, because the rescue comes from a teacher rather than from a classmate. That gap is the conversation. Ask your child what any of the others in that classroom could have done, and you will get further than a lecture ever gets you. Ages four to eight. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →

5. The Recess Queen — by Alexis O'Neill

Mean Jean runs the playground and nobody swings, kicks or bounces until she says so. Then Katie Sue turns up, far too small and far too new to know the rules, and asks Jean to jump rope with her. The bounce of the rhyme is what carries it for four- and five-year-olds, but the useful bit is what Katie Sue does, which is treat the least likeable child on the playground as a possible friend. It is the hardest version of being a good friend and the one children almost never see modelled. Ages four to eight. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →

6. Bear Feels Sick — by Karma Wilson

Bear comes down with something, his friends pile into the cave to make him comfortable, and the moment he is better every last one of them catches it. There is no conflict and no lesson stapled to the end, which is exactly why it belongs here. Younger children need to see the boring, undramatic half of friendship, the turning up with soup, and Jane Chapman's warm illustrations make it something a three-year-old will ask for again. Read it in the week somebody in the class is off sick and it lands twice as hard. View Bear Feels Sick on Amazon →

7. How Do Dinosaurs Play with Their Friends? — by Jane Yolen

The toddler rung of the list, and a board book, so it survives being sat on. Jane Yolen and Mark Teague run their usual trick: enormous dinosaurs doing every single thing wrong first, grabbing, hogging, throwing the toys, and then doing it properly. Two- and three-year-olds find the wrong half hilarious, which is what gets them to sit still for the right half. If everything else on this page is a year or two away yet, start here. Listed for ages two to four. View How Do Dinosaurs Play with Their Friends? on Amazon →

How to choose one, and what to do after you close it

Match the book to the gap. A child who steamrolls a sad friend with suggestions needs the rabbit. A child who wants to help and goes red instead needs Be Kind. A child who joins in with the giggling, or who stands by while it happens, needs Chrysanthemum and then a long look at the classroom in it. A child who has decided one particular kid is impossible needs Katie Sue. And a child who is waiting to be picked needs Silver, because the whole of Sharing Silver is about going first.

Then do the small thing afterwards, which almost everybody skips. Do not ask whether your child would have been kind. They will say yes, because that is the answer the question is fishing for. Ask what they would have actually done, out loud, in words, standing where that character was standing. It is a slower conversation, and you will get some very odd answers. That is the point. A child who has rehearsed one sentence at bedtime is far likelier to find it in their mouth at lunchtime than a child who has agreed with you about kindness in the abstract.

Keep your expectations sensible while you do it. The visible parts of friendship, handing over a toy or patting someone who is crying, start to show up from about two, though reliable turn-taking takes another year or so. The rest of it leans on being able to work out what another child is feeling when it is not what you are feeling, and research suggests that ability builds gradually across the preschool and early school years. A four-year-old who walks past an upset friend has usually not noticed. He has not decided not to care.

For more, see our guide to raising a kind, sharing friend, children's story books about friendship for stories about the friendships themselves, and books about feeling left out if your child is currently on the receiving end.