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Short answer: start with Sharing Silver if your child is the rough or bossy one, Stick and Stone if you want the clearest picture of stepping in, and The Invisible Boy if your child is the one nobody picks. Have You Filled a Bucket Today?, Enemy Pie and Do Unto Otters fill in the rest of the shelf.

Most parents land on this page for one of two reasons. Either something happened and you would rather hand your child a story than a lecture, or nothing has happened yet and September has made you think about it. The second reason is the better one. A book read on an ordinary Tuesday, when nobody at the table is upset and nobody has to defend themselves, goes in far deeper than the same book read as a consequence.

It is worth knowing what your child is most likely to be in any of this, because it is probably not the bully or the target. It is the child standing there watching. Lynn Hawkins, Debra Pepler and Wendy Craig observed grade one to six children on school playgrounds and published what they found in Social Development in 2001. Peers were present for 88 percent of the episodes they recorded and stepped in during 19 percent of them. When one did step in, the bullying stopped within ten seconds in 57 percent of cases. Kindergarten sits just under that age band, which is exactly why it is the year to start.

The gap in those numbers is not bravery. A five year old will happily tell you that leaving somebody out is mean, and then stand next to it saying nothing, because nobody has ever told them what stepping in sounds like out loud. That is the specific job a good book does at this age. Six below, in order, with what each one is actually for.

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 never lectures him about it. He walks him round Friendship Forest and lets him watch. 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 share them with. My two saw where it was heading long before Bandit did, which is the point of the design: the child works it out first and feels clever for it.

Sharing Silver picture book cover

“How you treat others is how you will be treated by others.”

Sharing Silver: a superhero training story about sharing and giving, for ages 3–7. Our top pick for kindergarten because it is the only book here aimed squarely at the child causing the problem, and it never once makes him the villain.

View Sharing Silver on Amazon

Nearly every bullying book on the shelf is written for the child on the receiving end. Very few are written for the one doing it, and if that is your five year old, you already know how fast a story about a sad, excluded character turns into a folded-arms silence. Sharing Silver slips past that guard because Bandit stays the hero of his own story the whole way through. He is never shamed and never made to apologise on the page. He changes because he watches what happens to everybody else, and the line above is the one my youngest started quoting back at his brother within a week.

The age fit is good here: written for three to seven, so kindergarten sits right in the middle rather than at the edge. You can read a sample of Sharing Silver before you buy, and how Sharing Silver teaches kindness breaks the story down beat by beat if you want something ready for the conversation afterwards.

2. Stick and Stone by Beth Ferry

Stick is alone. Stone is alone. A bullying pine cone starts on Stone, Stick says three words in his defence, and a friendship begins that pays itself back when a storm carries Stick off and Stone goes looking for him. The whole book runs on a handful of words a page, which matters more at five than it sounds: a kindergartener can follow the entire shape of stepping in without losing the thread halfway through. Beth Ferry wrote it, Tom Lichtenheld illustrated it, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published it in 2015. If you only read one book on this list before your child starts, read this one. The rescue is small, fast and copyable, which is the whole brief. View Stick and Stone on Amazon →

3. The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig

Brian is never 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 the form of unkindness that gets missed most often in kindergarten, because nothing happens that anybody can report, and its version of stepping in is exactly the size a five year old can manage. Notice somebody, then say one thing. Published in 2013 and pitched at roughly six to nine, so it is the top end of the kindergarten band and reads better in the summer term than in September. View The Invisible Boy on Amazon →

4. Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud

Everybody carries an invisible bucket, kind acts fill it, unkind ones empty it, and the child who dips into somebody else's bucket never ends up with a fuller one. It is closer to a lesson than a story, which is normally a mark against a picture book. It earns its place because so many kindergarten classrooms already run on this vocabulary, and a child who arrives knowing what bucket filling means has a shared language with their teacher from day one. Written by Carol McCloud, illustrated by David Messing, first published in 2006. Ask which moments today filled a bucket and which emptied one, and you will get a far more honest account of the school day than asking what happened. View Have You Filled a Bucket Today? on Amazon →

5. Enemy Pie by Derek Munson

Jeremy Ross moves in down the road and ruins a perfect summer. Dad has a recipe for getting rid of an enemy, and the one condition is that you must spend a whole day being nice to them first. You can see the ending coming; your five year old cannot, and watching them get there is most of the pleasure. What makes it useful rather than just funny is that it is the only book here about a child who has decided somebody is their enemy, which is a thing kindergarteners announce at dinner with total conviction. Written by Derek Munson, illustrated by Tara Calahan King, published by Chronicle Books in 2000. View Enemy Pie on Amazon →

6. Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller

Mr. Rabbit's new neighbours are otters and he panics about how to get along with them, so Owl offers him the golden rule and Rabbit works through it item by item: be friendly, be honest, share, say sorry, be polite. It is silly and pun-heavy enough that children do not notice they are being handed a code of conduct. This is the one to read in the fortnight before term starts, because it maps almost exactly onto the classroom rules a kindergarten teacher will introduce in week one. Written and illustrated by Laurie Keller and first published by Henry Holt in 2007. View Do Unto Otters on Amazon →

How to choose between them

Pick by which chair your child is sitting in. If they are the rough one or the bossy one, it is Sharing Silver, and read it without a preamble. If they are being left out rather than picked on, it is The Invisible Boy. If they have announced that somebody is their enemy, it is Enemy Pie. If you want the clearest short demonstration of standing up for a friend, it is Stick and Stone. And if you are reading ahead of the first day of term, Do Unto Otters and Have You Filled a Bucket Today? will have your child speaking their teacher's language before they walk in.

One note on the reading itself. Resist ending 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 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 actual sentence out loud, because that is the missing piece in those playground numbers. "Come and play with us" is enough. So is "stop, he doesn't like that." A child who has said the words once at the kitchen table is far likelier to find them on a playground.

Either side of this age, bullying books for preschoolers starts the ladder at three to five and books about bullying for elementary students picks it up at six. Picture books about bullying is the wider list across three to seven, and the best anti-bullying books for kids is built specifically around stepping in for somebody else. Best books about kindness for kindergarten is the 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.