Best Books About Bullying for Preschoolers (Ages 3–5)

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Most parents land on this page after a pickup. A teacher mentions something in passing, or your child climbs into the car and says nobody would let them into the game. It stings out of proportion to the size of it, partly because you cannot tell whether you are watching something that matters or just watching four year olds be four.

Here is the piece of research that settled it for me. Nikki Crick, Juan Casas and Monica Mosher published a study in Developmental Psychology in 1997 looking at whether relational aggression, meaning leaving somebody out or threatening to end a friendship, could even be measured in children this young. It could. They found these behaviours are already in a preschooler's repertoire, that they are distinguishable from hitting and pushing, and that they track with peer rejection for both boys and girls. So when your four year old reports that somebody said they cannot come to their birthday party, that is not you reading too much into it. It is the preschool form of the thing, and it responds well to being talked about.

What it does not respond to is a lecture, or a book aimed at a much older child. Preschool books about bullying need three qualities. Short text. A problem the child recognises, which at this age means exclusion and name-calling rather than anything physical. And an ending they can copy on Monday morning. Five below, easiest first.

1. Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle

The simplest thing on this list, and the one to reach for at three. A big dump truck barrels past the farm animals, too important to say hello, and then sinks into the mud. Nobody comes. Little Blue, who has beeped hello at every animal in the book, is the one who brings help. The animals who were beeped at come running; the ones the dump truck sped past do not. Jill McElmurry's animals are gorgeous, the rhyme carries a wriggling three year old, and the moral never gets stated out loud. Clarion Books, 2008, 32 pages, listed at preschool to grade 3. View Little Blue Truck on Amazon →

2. Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev

A boy and his tiny pet elephant turn up for the Pet Club and find a sign on the door saying strictly no elephants. They walk away. Then they find the other children who were turned away, with their skunk and their narwhal and their bat, and start a club of their own with a sign that says all are welcome. This is the exclusion book for three to five, and what makes it work is that the answer is not confrontation. Nobody argues with the sign. They go and build something better, which happens to be exactly what a four year old is capable of doing at the sand tray. Illustrated by Taeeun Yoo, 32 pages, preschool to grade 3. View Strictly No Elephants on Amazon →

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

Everyone carries an invisible bucket. Kind words fill it, unkind words dip into it, and dipping into someone else's never fills your own. That is the entire idea, and it gives a preschooler something almost no other book on this subject does: a word for what just happened. Once "you dipped into her bucket" exists in your house, a three year old can use it about themselves, which is far more useful than being told off. Written by Carol McCloud, illustrated by David Messing, Bucket Fillers Press, 32 pages. Be warned that the follow-up questions at the back are aimed at classrooms and you can safely skip them at bedtime. View Have You Filled a Bucket Today? on Amazon →

4. 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 arrives, tiny and new and completely unaware of the rules, and asks Jean whether she wants to jump rope. The whole book turns on that one question. It rhymes hard, it bounces, and Laura Huliska-Beith's illustrations are loud enough to hold a room, so this is the one for reading to a group rather than to one child at bedtime. Scholastic Press, February 2002, 32 pages. At the upper end of preschool it lands best, because a five year old can hold the idea that the mean one might be lonely. View The Recess Queen on Amazon →

5. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes

Chrysanthemum loves her name right up until her first day at school, when Victoria announces that it is too long, it is peculiar, and it is a flower. She wilts a little more each morning. What saves her is a music teacher mentioning, almost in passing, that she is considering the name Chrysanthemum for her own baby, and the whole class turns around overnight. This is the name-calling book, and Henkes gets at something children rarely hear said plainly, which is that teasing is usually about the teaser rather than the thing being teased. Greenwillow Books, September 1991, 32 pages, and the longest text here. Save it for four and five. View Chrysanthemum on Amazon →

How to choose between them

Pick by what happened. If the mean words came out of your own child, it is Have You Filled a Bucket Today?, because it gives the whole family a word for what happened that you can keep using for months, and read it without any preamble about why you have chosen it. If your child is being shut out of games, it is Strictly No Elephants. If somebody laughed at their name or their shoes or their lunchbox, it is Chrysanthemum. If your child is barely three and you want to plant something early without ever saying the word bullying, it is Little Blue Truck. And The Recess Queen is the one to hand a preschool teacher.

Two things about the reading itself. Do not finish with "so what should we always do?" A story turns into a rule the moment you do that, and rules are the thing children this age have already learned to nod along with. Ask what they would have said if they had been standing there, and be ready for an answer you do not love.

Then give them the actual sentence, out loud, in your own kitchen. Preschoolers cannot invent words under pressure. "Can I play too?" is enough. So is "that's not kind." And the third one matters most at this age: teach the difference between telling and tattling, which is that telling is when somebody might get hurt and tattling is when you want somebody in trouble. Then thank them for telling you, every single time, including the times it turns out to be nothing at all.

When they are older, bullying books for kindergarten is the next rung at five and six, picture books about bullying widens the net to three to seven, and bullying books for elementary students picks the story back up at six. The best anti-bullying books for kids is the list built around being the child who steps in. For a preschooler who is struggling with the sharing that starts most of these fights, best books about sharing for preschoolers is the companion list, and helping a child who's being bullied is what to do rather than what to read.