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Short answer: for ages 6–10, start with Sharing Silver, then Each Kindness, The Invisible Boy, The Recess Queen, Chrysanthemum and, for the oldest end, Way of the Warrior Kid.
Parents usually arrive here mid-week, after something. A teacher rang. A child came home and said nobody would sit with them at lunch. Or you have watched your own child come back from a playdate repeating a phrase that did not come from your house.
The first thing worth knowing is that your child is most likely none of the three people in the story you are imagining. They are the fourth. Lynn Hawkins, Debra Pepler and Wendy Craig watched grade one to six children on school playgrounds and published what they saw in Social Development in 2001. Other children were present for 88 percent of the bullying episodes they recorded. Those children stepped in during 19 percent of them. And when somebody did step in, the bullying stopped within ten seconds in 57 percent of cases.
Sit with that pair of numbers for a moment, because it reframes the whole shelf. Stepping in works far more often than it does not, and it almost never happens. The gap is not courage, it is that nobody has told an eight year old what stepping in is supposed to sound like. That is the job these books can genuinely do, and it is why I would read them before anything goes wrong rather than after.
Six below, in order. One is for the child doing the picking on, two are about being left out, one is about a name, one is about a playground, and the last is a chapter book for the end of elementary when picture books stop landing.
1. Sharing Silver: the one written from the troublemaker's side
Bandit is a young dog with a talent for trouble. He raids a beehive in the opening pages, gets stung, and Silver the Super Pup does not lecture him about it once. He walks him round Friendship Forest and lets him watch instead. Olivia the owl gives her music away and the forest gives back. Benny builds a waterwheel that serves everybody. Greedy Gus sits on a heap of cookies with nobody to eat them with. My two worked out where it was heading long before Bandit did. He gets there last, and that is the whole design.
“The kindest animals have the most friends, and those who help the most have helpers everywhere.”
Sharing Silver: a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7. Our top pick for this list because it is the only one here aimed squarely at the child causing the problem, and it never once makes him the villain.
View Sharing Silver on AmazonAlmost every bullying book on the shelf is written for the child on the receiving end or the child watching. Very few are written for the one doing it, and if that is your child, you already know how fast a story about a victim turns into folded arms. Sharing Silver gets past that guard because Bandit is the hero of his own story throughout. He is never shamed, never made to apologise on the page, and he changes because he watches what happens to everybody else. Psychologists call the grown-up version of the pattern the norm of reciprocity, and no seven year old needs that phrase. What they need is to see it play out three times to characters they like, then hear it in one line they can carry into the yard.
Be honest about the age band. It is written for three to seven, so it does its best work in first and second grade, and a confident nine year old will find it young. For six and seven it is the strongest thing on this page. You can read a sample of Sharing Silver before you buy, and how Sharing Silver teaches generosity breaks the story down beat by beat if you want something to talk about afterwards.
2. Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson
Maya is new, and Chloe and her friends never let her in. Not violently, just steadily, day after day. Most elementary bullying looks like this rather than like a fight. Then Maya moves away, Ms. Albert gives a lesson about small kindnesses rippling outward like a stone dropped in water, and Chloe is left holding a chance she can no longer take. There is no reconciliation. Woodson refuses to hand you one, and that refusal is why this is the single best book about bullying for this age. Illustrated by E. B. Lewis, published by Nancy Paulsen Books in 2012, and the winner of a Coretta Scott King Author Honor and the Jane Addams Children's Book Award. Read it yourself first and expect questions at bedtime. View Each Kindness on Amazon →
3. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig
Brian is not bullied in any way a teacher would write down. He is simply never noticed, never picked, never invited, and Patrice Barton draws him in grey while every child around him is in colour. As one new classmate starts including him, the colour arrives. My children spotted that before I did. This is the book for exclusion rather than aggression, which is the form that gets missed most often at this age because nothing happens that anybody can report. Its version of stepping in is small and doable. Notice somebody, then say one thing. Published in 2013, pitched at roughly six to nine, with a discussion section at the back if you would rather not write the questions yourself. View The Invisible Boy on Amazon →
4. The Recess Queen by Alexis O'Neill
Mean Jean rules the yard and nobody swings, kicks or bounces until she says so. Then Katie Sue arrives, small and new and entirely unaware of the rules, and asks Jean to jump rope with her. The whole thing turns on that one invitation. It rhymes, it bounces, and Laura Huliska-Beith's illustrations are loud enough to carry a whole class, so it is the one to reach for if you are reading aloud to a group rather than at bedtime. Published by Scholastic in 2002 and aimed at about four to eight, which puts it in the younger half of elementary. It earns its place here because the child who fixes the problem is neither the bully nor the victim. That is the seat most children in the room are sitting in. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →
5. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
Chrysanthemum loves her name until the first day of school, when Victoria points out that it is long, it is strange, and it is a flower. She wilts a little more every morning. What rescues her is a teacher who mentions, almost in passing, that she is thinking of naming her own baby Chrysanthemum, and the classroom flips overnight. Henkes is showing children something they rarely get told outright: teasing is usually about status, not about the thing being teased. Useful thing to hand a seven year old who has been told their trainers are wrong. Published by Greenwillow Books in 1991, an ALA Notable Book, and best around four to eight. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →
6. Way of the Warrior Kid by Jocko Willink
Marc has had a miserable fifth grade. He is bad at gym, maths is beyond him, he cannot swim, and Kenny Williamson, the class bully, calls himself the King of the Jungle. Then Uncle Jake, a Navy SEAL, comes to stay for the summer and puts him through pull-ups, press-ups, swimming, better food, harder studying and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. By autumn Marc can stand up to Kenny, and the ending he chooses is to befriend him rather than beat him. Written by Jocko Willink, illustrated by Jon Bozak, published by Feiwel & Friends in 2017 and written for eight to twelve, so it is the top rung of this list and the only chapter book on it. Be clear about what it is: a story about a child rebuilding his own confidence, not a guide to how a school should respond. It works best for the nine or ten year old who has decided picture books are for babies and wants something with a plan in it. View Way of the Warrior Kid on Amazon →
How to choose between them
Pick by which chair your child is sitting in. If they are the one causing it, it is Sharing Silver, and read it without a preamble. If they are being frozen out rather than picked on, it is The Invisible Boy. If they were the one who froze somebody else out, it is Each Kindness. If somebody is being mocked for a thing they cannot change, it is Chrysanthemum. If you want a whole class or a whole car full of children to get it at once, it is The Recess Queen. And if they are nine or ten and want to feel like they have some control over it, hand them Way of the Warrior Kid and leave them alone with it.
One thing about the reading itself. Resist finishing with "so what should we always do?" That turns a story into a rule, and rules are the thing children this age have already learned to nod at. Ask instead what they would have done if they had been standing there, and be ready for an honest answer you do not enjoy. Then give them the sentence, out loud, because that is the missing piece in those playground numbers. "Come and play with us" is enough. So is "leave it, that's not funny." Children step in far more often when they have already said the words once somewhere safe.
For younger children, picture books about bullying covers three to seven and the best anti-bullying books for kids is the list built specifically around stepping in for somebody else. Best books about kindness for elementary students is the wider shelf this one sits inside. When you need something to do rather than something to read, helping a child who's being bullied is the practical companion, and when your child has no friends is the one for exclusion that has settled in.